


Radio Silence

by ViridianPanther



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M, Sci-Fi, Synthesis Ending, post-ME3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:49:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViridianPanther/pseuds/ViridianPanther
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With illustrations by StellarSparrow!</p>
<p>Twenty-one years have passed since Shepard gave his own life to activate the Crucible, synthesising organic and synthetic life and ending the war with the Reapers. Kaidan Alenko has become a recluse on a barely-habitable moon, clinging to the hope that, somehow, possibly, there might be a way to bring him back from the dead (again.)</p>
<p>New Citadel Security anti-piracy officer Natasha Loftus has her shuttle shot down on patrol, and—to her horror—discovers that Cerberus are implicated. Someone has assumed the mantle of the Illusive Man, and she finds herself in a race against time with people from the history books as Cerberus builds a doomsday machine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE: Singularity

**Author's Note:**

> Art for this story is by the fantastic [StellarSparrow](http://stellarsparrow.tumblr.com/post/34086168817/art-based-on-and-created-for-radio-silence-by) (or even _gasp_ Imogen!) Thanks are due to her, and to alishatorn for organising this Big Bang shindig.
> 
> Thanks are also due to BioWare for the fantastic universe (and that includes you, Casey Hudson and Mac Walters.) Finally, thanks to you, you lovely person, for taking your own time to read this story. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
>  
> 
> [Thanks, all!](http://www.thanksants.com/all)

> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. —Arthur C. Clarke

_“The Crucible is not a weapon. It is a bio-molecular synthesiser.”_

Shepard lurches forward, blood spilling from his mouth. He crouches a little, not caring that his legs are about to give way.

_“Its core function is to transform both synthetic and organic biologies around a new template.”_

Momentarily, he considers raising his gun, to spite the growing army of holographic figures behind him. Ash. Kirrahe. Mordin. Thane. The boy on Earth. _“The decision is yours,”_ they said. Destroy them, or take control.

_“…amplifies the transmission of dark energy signatures through four-space…”_

He tosses the pistol away, allowing it to fall to the glass floor. The impact feels like it’ll shatter his eardrums. He doesn’t care.

_“…an invading matrix is loaded into the system…”_

He feels a tear drop down his cheek, and doesn’t bother to wipe it away. He knows why.

This is the end. At last. No long retirement somewhere tropical. No living off royalties from the vids. No happy future with Kaidan.

The end, once and for all.

_“This construct is not equipped to simulate the outcome of the activation of the Crucible.”_

Guided by nothing more than his own instincts and bleeding lungs, Shepard hurls himself into the light.

The Aperture opens. The Aperture closes.

For an instant, space, time and four-space appear to fold in on themselves, before exploding in a tremendous bloom of green light.

Shepard’s final thought is what he’ll order for Kaidan when he finally joins him at the bar.


	2. The Man in the Moon

> **_New Citadel Information Bureau Galactic Codex (22 PBE)_ **  
>  Arcadian Expanse → Rama → **ANTEROS**
> 
> _Surface gravity:_ 0.32 _g_  
>  _Median surface temperature:_ 117°C (day), -149°C (night)  
>  _Population:_ 1  
>  _Principal settlement:_ Anteros Station
> 
> Anteros is a barren, barely-habitable rocky world forming a binary planetary system with the garden world of Rainer (hence its name, after the Greek god of requited love.)
> 
> Widely regarded to be wholly unremarkable in every respect, Anteros’s mineral and helium-3 resources have, over time, been almost entirely depleted by passing vessels looking to refuel prior to the construction of the Rama 6 fuel depot in 437 BBE. Small science parties occasionally visit from Rainer, but the only permanent biosphere was built in 8 PBE by a reclusive Alliance war veteran.
> 
> _NC-Sec TRAVEL ADVICE:_ The sole occupant of the Anteros Station biosphere has made it very clear to Rainer V.T.S. that he does not wish to receive visitors. He is an extremely powerful biotic and is believed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder—travellers are advised _not to approach_ Anteros Station except in an immediate emergency.

_I smell ozone._

The ceiling blurs into focus as I open my eyes, slowly, wincing at the pain and blinking as I wait for it to pass. _Words._ Smears resolve into handwritten words on a piece of paper taped to the ceiling.

‘YOUR NAME IS NATASHA LOFTUS. DO NOT PANIC. YOU ARE IN ANTEROS STATION. YOU HAVE BEEN IN A SHUTTLE CRASH.’

Shuttle crash? Oh. That explains why the last thing I remember was an engine alarm blaring.

I’m on a bed, a hard mattress with barely any give in it. Hospital bed? No, I can’t smell medi-gel or disinfectant.

Anteros. Anteros Station. _Shit._

I try moving my hands. Fingers, hands. All working. Good, I’m not paralysed. ‘YOU HAVE BEEN IN A SHUTTLE CRASH.’ Have I broken anything? Where am I, again? How—

I hear a door roll open, and try to sit up. _Gah!_

“Don’t try to move.” I got a glimpse of the voice’s face before giving up and falling back onto the pillow (it’s soft, at least.) Black, unkempt hair, and a deep, raspy voice that sounds North American, possibly Canadian.

“Where am I?”

“Hold still.” He steps into view, and I get a proper look: the black hair is laced with a little grey, and it extends over his cheeks and chin in a short beard. His skin’s pale, the tint of a veteran astronaut, but he looks like he could have some oriental heritage, some far Eastern blood in him. The eyes are a brownish-green, and glimmer with an orange reflection as he scans me with an old-fashioned omni-tool. “Your shuttle came down around thirty klicks east of here. You’re on Anteros Station.”

I was expecting someone… beardier. Most gen on the person who built Anteros station was along the lines of him being an alcoholic, or a red sand addict, or someone who’d burn you from the inside, with their mind, _on sight._ I’m remaining cautious, but he looks substantially more well-kept than I was expecting him to be.

I recognise the face from somewhere, but I can’t remember where.

“Thanks,” I whisper as he passes me some water. “Sergeant Natasha Loftus, NC-Sec Anti-Piracy.” He already knows my name, of course, but I’m still technically supposed to identify myself.

“Cayden Alenko,” he says, offering his hand. “This place is my home.”

Alenko. The name rings a bell, but… “Did you find my omni-hook anywhere?” I ask, and Alenko gestures to the desk. Good. I don’t need to be wearing it—the fact I’m within range is enough.

 _Cayden Alenko—did you mean Kaidan Alenko?_ the extranet search engine corrects me. Name spelling. Ugh. I remember a kid from school called Cayden with a ‘c’: we used to tease him that it sounded like a porn star’s name. This spelling makes it easier for me to take Major Kaidan Makoto Alenko, born October 2151, seriously.

Born to an Alliance navyman with prodigious biotic talents, he—oh, _him._ Major Kaidan Alenko, member of Commander Shepard’s crew on the _Normandy_ at the Battle of Earth. Second (and last) human Spectre before the old Citadel was destroyed. I feel ashamed for not recognising him, or at least his name.

“Pleased to meet you,” I say, sheepishly, snapping back to meat-space and trying to shake his hand as firmly as possible, hoping he didn’t notice my reverie.

“You too,” Alenko says. “Don’t get many visitors around here.”

“I can imagine.” His hand feels warm, calloused, and I can sense a little nervousness in him. Understandable.

“I’ve called NC-Sec,” he says, re-activating his omni-tool. “They’re sending a shuttle for you, it should be here in around six hours.”

“Good,” I say, swinging my legs out of the bed. A few scrapes and bruises, the medical app on my omni-hook says as I slip it back behind my ear—nothing major, and well-patched up.

Alenko’s taller than he looks in his file picture, in the vids of his Spectre induction, in everything I’ve just assimilated from the extranet. Thinner, too, although he’s aged reasonably well.

“There’s food in the kitchen if you’d like some,” he says, shutting off his omni-tool and disappearing around the doorway, “and there’s a bathroom at the end of the corridor. All your things are in that crate on the floor.”

I use the toilet while a coffee pours from the machine. Clean, too. This whole complex is immaculate (and underground—that’s the only explanation for the lack of windows.) The room I woke up in must be Alenko’s bedroom, but for a single man it’s alarmingly tidy. Not just tidy—impersonal, as if he’d moved into it yesterday.

The water at the faucet is cold, and there’s no setting for the temperature. I momentarily wonder if the shower is the same, and a finger of the controls tells me that it is. I smell a bit, but not too bad, and I can wait for a warm shower. Presumably Alenko makes do without. Maybe the water heater has failed. Maybe he doesn’t need one. Possibly.

The kitchen is also disarmingly clean. There’s a single fruit bowl, the contents of which (three Pink Lady apples, two bananas and a bunch of Thessian wumbleberries) appear to be fresh. The cupboards contain nothing but boxes of ammet grain and stock cubes. Probably grown on-site, given the size of the biosphere. A fridge is stocked with juices, lager and eggs.

So I’m drinking black coffee in the apartment of the Anteros Station madman, formerly one of the most powerful biotics known to humankind and now living in an underground bunker on a barren moon in the arse-end of nowhere, off fruit and flavoured ammet porridge. Something to tell the grandchildren, I suppose.

  
[](http://stellarsparrow.tumblr.com/post/34086168817/art-based-on-and-created-for-radio-silence-by)   


Artwork by [StellarSparrow](http://stellarsparrow.tumblr.com/post/34086168817/art-based-on-and-created-for-radio-silence-by)

I can hear static through some kind of sound system. Static? Noisy audio line?

He seems pleasant, non-violent. Not what I was expecting. I’m not sure if I was expecting some kind of bearded madman with a drinking problem and daddy issues. A quick look back at the extranet tells me Alenko’s father died a few weeks before the end of the war, making a stand in the American Rockies while his son flew around the galaxy defeating the Reapers. Mother went missing, presumed dead, in a bunker collapse in Denver.

Never married. Very private, a video of him being interviewed by a journalist on the _Normandy_ shows him being fiercely dismissive of any questions about his personal life. On the other hand, Joker Moreau’s memoir devotes an entire chapter to him—and a romantic relationship with Commander Shepard.

Widowed? No, not the right word. Never married. Never got the chance.

I sip at my coffee again, stashing all the additional data my omni-hook has retrieved to read when it’s more convenient. Coffee’s almost empty. How long have I been here? Six minutes.

What _is_ that noise?

Alenko has moved to a recliner in his living room, an empty, spartan affair with a giant, inactive vid-screen on one wall and two shelves littered with ornaments: model starships, an old Alliance wartime helmet, a small, Japanese-looking statuette that looks like a cat—something my omni-hook identifies as a netsuke. A bottle of fortified Canadian wine and a houseplant occupy a single coffee table in the middle of the room.

“Can I get you anything?” Alenko asks, barely looking up from the tablet in his hands.

“No, no,” I mumble, “it’s fine.” That noise is _exceptionally_ loud now.

“I just got an update from your shuttle. They say they expect to perform a de-orbit burn in about forty-five minutes, they should be here within the hour.”

“Good.” Far earlier than I expected. I shouldn’t intrude, but I have to ask. “I think there might be a problem with your audio line,” I say, gesturing at the speaker mounted at the border of the ceiling and the wall.

“A problem?”

“Yeah. It sounds quite noisy, maybe some equipment you have is interfering with it.”

“There’s no… ah.” A little twinkle of understanding pops into his eye. “It’s supposed to be making that noise.”

“Music?”

“Not quite.” He settles back into the recliner, huddling himself in black material. It takes me a few seconds to identify it in the dark, but it’s a black hoodie, red stripe down one arm, old Alliance N7 insignia on his chest.

A few seconds pass. He says nothing.

“What is it, then?” I ask, even though I know at this point I’m just being nosey and intrusive.

His eyes look up with something that tends towards, but never quite forms a squint. “How much do you know about me, Detective Loftus?”

“I know enough.”

He waits, expectant, unblinking.

“I know you’re the most powerful human biotic ever to walk the earth,” I begin, but cut myself off as he raises his hand.

“I’m actually the third.”

“Oh?”

“The second most powerful… doesn’t officially exist. First is a man called Jason Prangley… last I knew he was capable of bringing down a whole building if he tried.”

 _Jason Prangley._ My omni-hook runs his name and it comes up blank—he must be with the Alliance, still in service. “I still wouldn’t want to get in a fight with you, though.”

“Do you think that’s likely?”

“ _No,_ no,” I say, quickly, feeling like a massive idiot. “I was just… sorry, forget I said that.”

“Go on, then,” Alenko says, “what else do you know?”

“I know you served under Commander Shepard.”

He pauses, as if he’s expecting more.

“I know you were on the _Normandy_ together, both of them… apparently you had a history with him. According to Joker Moreau’s autobiography, you were in a relationship with him before he…”

“I see.” Gingerly, Alenko places the tablet on the armrest of the recliner, leaning forwards. I find myself subconsciously checking the path to the exit, watching his figure closely for any sign of a biotic corona, even though I know it’s stupid.

I’m still not sure I trust him.

“The noise,” he begins, “is all that’s left of Commander Shepard.”

 _Noise. Radio noise, background radiation._ It does sound faintly melodic.

“When the Crucible fired, Shepard was… converted—I think that’s the right way of putting it—into a signal, an energy signature, broadcast across the galaxy. What you’re hearing is the echo of that explosion.”

Gingerly, like an older man, Alenko stands, and makes his way to the blank vid-screen, wiping away dust with his hand. The sound through the speakers suddenly doesn’t sound like plain white noise. There are patterns, rising, falling, repeating, in superposition with the echo of the Big Bang.

“Shepard saved my life… more times than I deserve. This noise is all I have left of him.”

 _More than I deserve._ “Is this about Virmire? The Battle of London?”

“Not just that.” Alenko switches the display on. “You’re a first-generation transhuman, am I right?”

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” Alenko says, tapping at his tablet and changing the image on the screen to an old-fashioned PTA scan. “This was my head before the Crucible fired, only a few weeks.”

I scan the image. Heavily invasive implant in the rear of his neck, with termini reaching right into the cortex. There’s a tumour growing there, around three centimetres across by two and four. _Big._

“If that’s from twenty-two years ago, you should be dead by now.”

“Right,” Alenko says. “Except I’m not.”

“Go on?”

“Well, it was caused by my L-2 biotic implant,” he says, shutting the screen off again, “so the only option was for me to have it removed entirely. Would’ve crippled my biotic ability, and the mortality rate for that procedure was something like forty per cent.”

“I see.” Obviously the activation of the Crucible did something to him. “I’m guessing the implant is no longer a problem?”

“Look at the back of my neck.” Alenko turns his head, and where there _should_ have been a large, round socket for a biotic amp, there was simply an increase in the green termini on his skin, forming a roughly perfect circle of circuit lines and logic gates. “It did that all by itself. I got the all-clear three weeks after the Crucible.”

So he _does_ owe his life to Shepard. Again. “My mum always said it was like a miracle.”

“It was terrifying, at first.” Alenko returns to his seat. “I mean, we didn’t get back to Earth for two months, I personally missed the worst of it. But… apparently, it got pretty grim.”

Stories of children being burned as abominations, newly-sentient Husks being slaughtered, religious cults forming and then committing suicide, all litter the bowels of the extranet. A lot of them are true.

“But… yeah,” Alenko continues, “certainly a miracle. You know what they say, any sufficiently advanced technology is like magic until we can understand it.”

“Yeah.”

I expect him to say something else, but he just looks back down at his tablet, as if I no longer existed. I can practically hear my mother screaming at me not to be nosey, but he does fascinate me and I’m leaving in less than forty minutes.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” I begin, wondering if he’s even taking notice, “why are you here?”

He barely looks up. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why did you hole yourself up here?”

I notice he’s stopped reading now. “What are you getting at?” he asks, leaning forward again.

“Major—”

“Kaidan, please.”

“ _Major,_ all I’m asking is…” I continue, but trail off when I realise I’m now just being needlessly intrusive. “Sorry,” I mumble. “Forget it.”

“No,” Alenko says, his figure relaxing a little and a little curl forming on his lips, “it’s fine. I’m not in a hurry, just ask. Hit me with it.”

Me and my big mouth.

“Back on Rainer, you’re something of… well, there are all sorts of stories about who the Anteros Station Madman could be. You’re just not what I was expecting.”

He pauses, processing what I’ve just told him. _This man does pause a lot._ “I see.”

“I suppose I’m just trying to understand what made you decide to come here… to isolate yourself.”

Alenko’s head droops a little, and he takes a few breaths before answering. I sense that he feels older than he looks.

“The trouble is explaining what it’s like… you live a life, you plan a career, you find someone just as the world’s ending and it’s perfect, for _just a few weeks_ , and then they’re snatched away from you and you’re left alone.”

I’m quietly reading Joker Moreau’s memoir in the back of my mind. Mentions of how Moreau had seen Alenko pine after Commander Shepard for three years, and how devastated he’d been at his death—both times.

“I mean, I lost my parents in the war. I lost my friends, I lost Shepard… and suddenly there was nothing left for me but a million and one journalists fishing for a quote or a photograph.”

“So you just stay here?”

“There are worse ways to live out your days,” Alenko says. “Building and maintaining this place gives me enough work not to get bored.”

“Must be dull, though? Sometimes?”

“I like the fact it’s dull.” He settles back into the chair, into the fabric of the hoodie. “Sort of numbs my mind to everything.”

I open my mouth to ask what he means by ‘everything’, but I already know. I’ve already been nosey enough.

I check on the progress of the shuttle. No response—they’ve probably entered a radio black-spot because they’re not answering my omni-hook’s pings. Should be thirty minutes or so, no less at this rate.

“I didn’t properly say thanks for rescuing me after my shuttle crashed.”

“You’re welcome,” Alenko smiles. “Nice to get a visitor, once in a while.”

“The travel advisory for this place does say ‘no visitors,’” I point out. “You’re sure it doesn’t get dull here?”

“Well… like I said, I like it.”

“I see.” At least half an hour until the shuttle arrives, and I’m standing here making small talk with a hermit. “I’m going to just check through that crate, is that OK?”

“Go ahead.”

I head back into the bedroom and rifle through the crate. Everything that should be here is here: NC-Sec briefcase with box-‘o’-tricks; first aid kit; Starbuck pistol with three thermal clips; change of clothes. He hasn’t tried to steal anything from me.

Alenko seems like a good egg, at least.

I check the extranet again. The Codex entry for Anteros Station refers to one occupant, a veteran of the war, possibly with PTSD. If Alenko does have PTSD that would explain a lot, but it doesn’t seem like he does. His behaviour doesn’t fit.

I send a ping for the shuttle again. Nothing. Have they run into trouble? That’s unlikely. No dangerous space weather announced in the last forecast, anyway. I do another check of the extranet.

Nothing. No external servers answering my requests. _Dammit._ I do a self-test on my omni-hook: it reports itself as being fine, networking functioning normally. This is damn peculiar. I try again: nothing. _Request time-out. Request time-out._

“Major,” I ask, heading back into the main room of the apartment, “have you just lost extranet access?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Well,” I say, as Alenko lights up his omni-tool and enters a few commands, “I’ve just tried, and my ping requests keep timing out.”

Alenko frowns—he’s evidently having the same problem. “I’ll head up and check the tower,” he says, “maybe a fuse has failed or something.”

“If the tower had failed,” I say, feeling some latent fear in my stomach as I consider the implications, “the requests would be timing out at the gateway, not at the external servers. Something’s not right here.”

Something—or some _one_. Maybe it’s my training kicking in, but I can sense that something’s gone wrong. Routing equipment doesn’t just _fail_ like that.

“Something’s not right?” Alenko sends a few more pings, frowns when they’re not returned. “How do you know this isn’t just an equipment failure?”

“Transhuman,” I remind him. “I’m a technopath, remember?”

“Oh.” Alenko stares at me for a moment, unable to think of anything intelligent to say. “I was only vaguely aware.”

“Well,” I say, “we should check your computers, check for some kind of rogue process, or virus. You don’t have a VI here, do you?”

“Nope.”

I do a sniff of the local network with my omni-hook. Nothing too suspicious here. Termini at Alenko’s omni-tool, his desk computer, sound system, a sub-net called BASEMENT, an external connection at the comms tower, external security cameras.

“Do you mind giving me access to the external security cameras?” I ask.

“What?”

“The CCTV cameras. I’ve got a hunch.”

“For god’s sakes,” Alenko says, his voice rising with alarm, “are you just making this up?”

“No. A router doesn’t just fail like that, it’s like it’s been reconfigured.”

“Ah.” Alenko doesn’t have anything intelligent to say for a few seconds. “You think there’s something suspicious going on?”

“Yes. I _know_ something fishy is happening.”

Alenko tries pinging an external server again. Nothing. “Security cameras are offline.”

“Maybe we should go up to the surface—”

_BOOM._

A thunderous noise comes from the main doorway. I catch a flash of blue in the corner of my eye—Alenko has flared with a biotic corona.

“This place is uninhabited, except for you?”

“It was!” Alenko barks, stepping forward, a barrier beginning to flare from his hands as another _thump_ reverberates through the apartment. “Get your pistol, I’ll cover you.”

I make a run to the crate, load up the pistol. The green light comes on—self-test OK. I check back through the data logs of this place, through Alenko’s calls to the shuttle.

Something seems off about the responses. The key they’re signed with is out-of-date—the information Alenko got from the shuttle was _fake._

That shuttle _isn’t_ NC-Sec. Someone was masquerading as NC-Sec… and coming to pick me up.

Why? Unless…

“ _You!_ ” Alenko’s voice comes from outside, and I dart into cover, priming the pistol and cocking it to the ‘armed’ position.

A dark figure is visible behind Alenko’s barrier, and it’s projecting something. A hologram, a human hologram.

I slow my breathing, careful not to give my presence away, and peer more closely at the insignia on the figure’s chest. It’s armoured, and there’s a yellow logo, or mark of some kind, a hexagon, long sides, two points at the verticals—

_Cerberus?_

“ _You know why my agent is here, Major Alenko,_ ” comes a voice, at a guess North American in origin.

“How did you find out where I was?” Alenko demands, “what about Loftus, is she part of this?”

No. _No,_ I can’t be. My shuttle crashed—why _did_ it crash? No idea, still.

“ _We arranged for Loftus’s shuttle to crash. I hope you don’t mind us using her as a diversion._ ”

That can’t be—can it? No, there’s no _way_ that’s the Illusive Man.

“What do you want?” Alenko says, keeping his barrier steady— _exceptionally_ bright, I can see, and I wonder why he doesn’t just kill the intruder.

“ _You know what I want, Major. Give me the atomic actualiser._ ”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I enable my kinetic barrier, and gingerly step out into the living room. It _is_ Cerberus insignia, and that man—slim build, silvery-black hair swept back across a pointy head—who else could it be?

“You crashed my shuttle,” I spit. “I could’ve died.”

“Natasha,” the Illusive Man says, the hologram turning to face me directly and point, “and yet, you didn’t—”

Alenko doesn’t give him time to finish his sentence.

There’s an orange flash and an arc of blue as a thousand volts surge through the man’s omni-tool, the hologram crackling and vanishing. Alenko detonates the barrier with a _crack_ and a painful warp of space-time, sending the operative to the ground.

“You’re under arrest!” I shout, although I’m not sure what for (trespassing, that’s it) but he’s scrabbling as I approach, reaching for a holster at his waist.

“He’s got a gun!” Alenko hurls a stasis field at the intruder, locking his body in a rotating cocoon of light as I squeeze the trigger—one, two, _three_ shots and the kinetic barrier crackles and dies and he crumples onto his own legs.

 _Fuck._ I just killed someone. An actual person. Shot him stone dead.

“Shit,” Alenko says, recoiling a little and breathing heavily.

“You OK?” I ask, disabling the gun and giving him an arm to steady himself.

“Yeah.” He stands himself upright. “I haven’t done that in a while, that’s all.”

I look at the body for a moment, but I can’t bring myself to examine it. I know it’s stone dead, its life-support sensors have registered the user’s death, but it feels like it (or he, or she) will jump up and attack me.

“Sorry,” I say, quickly, finding the case at the waist of my trousers and holstering the gun. There was more recoil than I was expecting. _God,_ that was frightening. “What’s an atomic actualiser?”

“It’s something I’ve been working on,” Alenko says, “it’s a kind of… it’s hard to explain. I’d rather not talk about it, we need to call C-Sec.”

“C-Sec doesn’t exist any more,” I remind him.

“NC-Sec, then, same difference—”

“Major,” I snap without realising how much I’m raising my voice, “I’ve just had my shuttle shot down by people looking for this thing. I think I’ve got a right to know what it is.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Do I have to go back to HQ and get a warrant?”

He pauses for a moment. He opens his mouth to say something, but no sound comes out.

“I’ll show you,” Alenko says, “but _only_ on condition that no-one else— _no-one_ —hears about it.”

He’s quite serious, but I don’t have a problem with bluffing. “OK.”

I follow Major Alenko—he asked me to call him Kaidan, didn’t he?—back down the corridor and into the kitchen. An entrance console lights up on a door that I’d presumed lead to a pantry or a store cupboard, maybe a utility room.

“In here,” Kaidan says, as the door slides open and we descend a flight of stairs. There’s another level to this place, I realise. That must be what the BASEMENT sub-net was for.

This place smells of medi-gel, and disinfectant, and there’s a strong metallic stench down here too. The lighting is dimmed to around 40%, and the white noise is louder than ever.

There’s another computer workstation down here, and a rack of servers. Kaidan opens one of them up, lights his omni-tool and points at something—conical, metallic, about the size of a fist, an electronic component with a tube running into the side, electrical connectors at the top, another tube running from the bottom.

“That’s an atomic actualiser,” Alenko says. “It’s Prothean technology, exceptionally advanced, that’s what Cerberus wanted. The going rate for one of those things is twelve billion credits.”

Electronic component. I peer more closely at it, trying to determine its function. The pipe from the side seems to be receiving something—hydrogen, at a guess—and it’s spitting, hissing, and sending things out through the other tube.

Atomic actualiser. “This thing’s fusing hydrogen into other types of atom,” I say, out loud, not realising I’m doing it. “Carbon, silicon, oxygen. Molecules beyond that.”

“It was salvaged from Project Crucible,” Kaidan says. “That thing came out of the wreckage from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, it’s still working sweet as a nut.”

He’s turning hydrogen into molecules—the complex hydrocarbons required for life, if I’m right. What’s he using this for?

“Where does this pipe lead?” I ask, following it with my eyes. Round a corner, through the wall, it’s only a little rubber tube, but it’s going _somewhere_. I can hear bubbling from the next room, a soft purplish blue light, and…

“ _Jesus_.”

It’s a cloning tank. A full, man-sized cloning tank, around the size of a walk-in shower, purplish, dimly lit, in the corner of a room that otherwise could’ve been like any office.

And there’s a body in there. _No,_ that can’t be…

  
[](http://stellarsparrow.tumblr.com/post/34086168817/art-based-on-and-created-for-radio-silence-by)   


Artwork by [StellarSparrow](http://stellarsparrow.tumblr.com/post/34086168817/art-based-on-and-created-for-radio-silence-by)

“That’s Commander Shepard.” The body is flushed almost pure white, naked, floating in the tank and suspended by something that looks like an umbilical cord. The eyes are closed, and it’s completely hairless, too, save for a deep fuzz on his head. But the face is instantly recognisable, even counting the absence of the scar on his forehead and the dim glow of the nascent data streams on his face. _That’s Commander Shepard._ Clone, yes, but…

“What’s going on here?” I demand, turning and facing Alenko. “Human cloning is illegal.”

“Yeah.” Alenko droops his head.

 _Growing a clone of Commander Shepard_. He _is_ a distraught widower, semantics be damned. “Look,” I say, “that was twenty-two years ago. This is now. You have to—”

“It’s not that simple,” Alenko interrupts. “He’s dead, but he… he’s still _around_. I can hear him every time I turn the radio on, for god’s sakes.”

Those patterns in the noise. _The noise is all that’s left of Commander Shepard._ “So you’re trying to create a clone using an echo of the Crucible’s explosion?”

“It’s never worked,” he says. “They’ve never survived to the stage where the mental processes have started, they’ve never suffered.”

“Good,” I say, without thinking about it. _They_. There’s more than one. In the light of the clone tank, I can see there’s a row of beds, almost like a hospital ward, down a room spanning the full length of the complex—the nearest twelve or so containing their own Commander Shepard clone, preserved perfectly, dressed in a white surgical gown. “How long has this been going on for?”

“Years,” Alenko says, standing beside the nearest bed, squatting, peering into the clone’s eyes. “But I only got the atomic actualiser last year. These are all of the clones.”

I suddenly feel like I’m intruding. Kaidan strokes the clone’s forehead, runs his finger over its jawline, as if he’s going to bend down and kiss it. He never does, but it still feels like I’m watching some weird necrophiliac obsession. Is the clone Commander Shepard? No. Nothing more than a facsimile.

“Major,” I tell him, “if a defunct terrorist organisation has re-formed specifically to go after you for one electronic component, you’re doing very dangerous work.”

“They’re not after my work. They’re after the actualiser,” he says.

 _Twelve billion credits._ And it’s Prothean technology, so they can’t build their own without at least double that. “How did you get your hands on it?” I ask.

“Through an old friend,” he says. _Old friend._ My instructor at NC-Sec academy always told me that “old friend” was code for “someone whose identity I am unwilling to disclose,” so I don’t push it.

“Either way, that thing’s dangerous,” I say.

“I know.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the clone.

“I can take you to the Citadel. We can offer you protection, you’re not safe here.”

“I…” Alenko looks at me, then at the clone again. “I’m not sure I’m ready.”

“Look, Kaidan.” I put my gun away, and put a hand on his shoulder, not really knowing what I’m doing any more and feeling like I’m on auto-pilot. “Cerberus will be back for you. It’s not safe for you, here, and they’ll put you and your cloning project in jeopardy.”

Alenko takes another look at the clone, and lets out something that sounds a little bit like a sigh. Every aspect of his manner reminds me that he was a soldier: even his voice has that deep, gravelly intonation that only career soldiers and smokers have.

“Yeah,” he whispers, standing up. “Yeah, I suppose…”

I told myself I didn’t have a problem with bluffing, but looking around now, I _do_ think Major Alenko’s intentions were honest. I know enough about cloning to believe him when he said none of the clones suffered.

But this place isn’t healthy for him. And I don’t want him to go from here to a prison cell in the Thames Estuary.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I say, reiterating my promise with an actual promise behind it, sincerity. “We’ll head to the Citadel, they’ll find you housing, give you identity protection. They’ll want to hear about Cerberus.”

“Yeah.” Alenko opens up that server rack again, and pushes and holds a button. There’s a whirr and a clunk, and the lights dim as the servers shut down and the cloning tank groans into inactivity; Kaidan pulls out the component he showed me, and stows it in his trouser pocket.


	3. Interception

The Cerberus operative’s shuttle is unmarked, and it’s an old-fashioned Kodiak from before the war in a less-than-ideal condition. Still in working order, but I doubt it’ll pass its next annual certification. It handles like a lethargic varren.

“I’ve sent a report to NC-Sec, they’ll be expecting us,” I say, spinning up the drive core as we move clear of the Charon relay.

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them what happened,” I say, “nothing more. I didn’t mention the clones.”

“Thank you.”

Kaidan doesn’t say anything after that, staring blankly forward. His jaw is clenched, his lips pressed firmly together, and he’s not giving anything away. A soldier’s face from someone who stopped fighting twenty-two years ago.

There’s a _pop_ from somewhere deep in the shuttle’s bowels, probably a spark plug firing somewhere as the eezo core’s whine sticks at the same pitch.

It’s probably fair to describe the silence as “pregnant.” I’m worried that the corpse we have in the back of the shuttle will start to smell.

“I just killed someone,” I mumble, without realising I’m saying it out loud. The data my omni-hook recorded will be crystal clear, there’s no way they can deny I acted in self-defence, but still… dammit? Why am I worrying about disciplinary action when I should be worrying about this poor sod’s family?

“Are you OK?” Alenko asks, quietly.

“I’m not sure,” I say, cancelling the shuttle’s vigilance warning with my foot. “I need some time to think.”

“It’s not something you get over quickly.” I can see the reflection of Kaidan’s face in the window. His jaw seems to have loosened a bit, and his voice has become softer.

Easy for him to say. He is—well, he _was_ a soldier, trained from the outset to kill people. I’m a police officer, a Detective for NC-Sec. I’m supposed to _keep_ the peace.

“Especially if you’re young,” Alenko adds, and I can sense he’s talking from experience. I’m twenty-one, a grown adult, but I only joined NC-Sec two years ago.

“Something you want to say?” I ask.

“I killed my first man at sixteen,” he says. Sixteen, but by the old education system… god, _school_ age. That must’ve been rough. “I know what it’s like.”

“Sounds like a hell of a young age for that to happen.”

“It was.”

I look up Alenko’s dossier again, and review the section on his childhood: a lot of it was only declassified a few years ago under the thirty-year rule. Encouraged to attend a public-private financed biotic acclimation camp on Gagarin Station. Turian expert brought in to speed up the process when it emerged that the contractor, Conatix, knew virtually nothing about biotics. It just so happened that the expert they chose happened to be a psychotic war veteran who regularly beat the students ( _children_ , I remind myself) and starved them, and deprived them of water. A couple of them snapped, and four even _died._ And, after nine months, he’d had his neck snapped in a melee fight after he broke an unnamed student’s arm, and another unnamed student leapt to her defence.

Unnamed, but I can guess exactly who it is. You wouldn’t guess it if you’d only seen Kaidan’s face, pronounced cheekbones, greying hair and glimmering brown eyes. But now I know, I can see the signs: the scar on his cheek, obscured by the beard but still there if you know where to look, where the teacher had pulled a knife on him.

“I’m sorry,” I say, quickly. He gives me a quizzical look for a second, before realising I’ve probably looked up the details of the situation (which I have.)

He doesn’t say anything, again.

“OK.” I’m determined to break the silence as the shuttle passes Saturn’s orbit. “I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself properly.”

“OK,” Alenko says, “hit me.”

“My name’s Natasha Loftus,” I begin, “I’m twenty-one, I was born on the seventh of May in Dublin. I moved to Manchester when I was nine months old, my mum’s a university professor, my dad was a miner… they’re, ah, separated.”

Why have I just given him a little dossier? I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.

“What does she teach?”

“Astrophysics. She did her PhD working at Jodrell Bank,” I say. “I earned my degree in Manchester, joined NC-Sec, moved to London last year.”

“Right.” Another awkward pause.

“I had a cameo in _Blasto Begins,_ ” I tell him. Probably my only claim to fame.

“The new one?”

“Yeah.”

“I remember the originals, which were… well, racist,” Alenko says, and that raises a chuckle from both of us.

“Have you seen it?”

“I started watching it. I couldn’t understand Blasto’s voice,” Alenko says. That was a common complaint from older people: that Blasto’s new voice was too ‘raspy,’ unintelligible.

“You know they’re making a sequel? _The Jellyfish Stings_?”

“I knew _of_ it.”

“I’m not in this one, don’t worry,” I quip, and we chuckle again, vacuously. This must set some kind of record for oafish small-talk in a shuttle. “Yeah. I was Police Officer Forty-Three.”

“How many of you were there?”

“Seventy-three… ah, here we go,” I smile, as Earth smears into view and we roll in over the Atlantic Ocean. The drive core winds down, and the radio crackles into life.

“Guildford V.T.S., this is unmarked vessel MSV-454897. Authentication token Whiskey Echo 4-9-6 Tango Bravo,” I say, replaying the message from NC-Sec in my head to make sure I’d got it right.

“ _Copy that, 454897, one moment, please._ ”

I look at Alenko in the interlude. “Don’t want them shooting us down when we try and land at the Citadel,” I explain, as the traffic controller’s voice clicks back over the radio.

“ _454897, you are clear to land, you will be arriving on landing pad Q. Please engage your auto-pilot system._ ”

I flip the switch on the console—this thing is old fashioned enough to augment its tactile console with _mechanical switches._ “Roger that, Guildford, you have control.”

The shuttle’s thrusters cut out, and the frame rattled slightly as it begins to coast into the atmosphere. “ _Thank you. Welcome home, Detective Loftus, Major Alenko. Guildford V.T.S. out._ ”

*

> **_New Citadel Information Bureau Galactic Codex (22 PBE)_**  
>  Sol → Earth → **NEW CITADEL**
> 
> Constructed on Earth as a matter of convenience after the defeat of the Reapers, the New Citadel is a large artificial island in the Thames Estuary, to the south east of Great Britain in Earth’s northern hemisphere.
> 
> The complex is centred around a two-kilometre Tower, the John Shepard Citadel Administrative Centre (known locally as the Shepard-Needle) which contains the administrative, legal and diplomatic organs of the Citadel. The surrounding four-kilometre island contains its own desalination plant, a training facility for NC-Sec, and a large manufactory complex, as well as an airfield, a railway station and a communications array. The air traffic tower is still under construction: in the meantime, north-western hemisphere air traffic is still under the control of the Vessel Traffic Service at the University of Surrey in Guildford.
> 
> The New Citadel is the gravitational centre of galactic power. The Council, based at the Citadel, is the ultimate governing body and commanding force for NC-Sec and is responsible for the ratification of laws and treaties, policy-making and funding for various projects in Citadel Space.
> 
> _NC-Sec TRAVEL ADVICE:_ New Citadel airspace is tightly controlled, and tourists and occasional visitors may find it quicker to land at Heathrow, London City or Southend Airport, and take a taxi or a train to Citadel Parkway station. The wait for landing clearance at the New Citadel airfield is usually in excess of three hours.

“I don’t trust those things.”

I peer up at the construction mech, its legs casting a long shadow over the scrubs and plains of the Citadel gardens. “It’s not a Reaper any more,” I remind him.

“I know,” Alenko says, “but they still scare me shitless.”

History classes at school and endless stories from Mum had taught me that the construction mechs were re-purposed, VI-driven shells of what were once the Reapers. As far as I can remember, they’ve always been benign, but I can, at least, fully understand why they give Kaidan the creeps.

“They’re putting me in the witness protection programme,” Kaidan tells me, “from tomorrow onwards my name’s Oswin Carth, and I’m supposed to be a computer programmer.”

“Have they sorted out accommodation for you?”

“I’m meant to be… ah, getting an apartment in Toronto.” He says it ruefully, with uncertainty, pausing occasionally. Christ. This isn’t the first time I want to brain someone in the witness protection branch.

“You’ve been isolated for fourteen years,” I remind him. “Are you sure you’re going to be OK?”

“Yeah…” he begins, the word stretching into a long, hesitant syllable before he drops the façade. “Well… no. I don’t know.”

“I bet this must be difficult for you,” I muse. “I’m sorry about… y’know.” _The clones. Your apartment. Anteros Station._

“It’s fine,” he says, peering into the distance, across the estuary as a tram peeks over the horizon and into view. I’m on leave, and there’s a mandatory suspension rule if any NC-Sec officer draws her gun anyway, let alone actually fires it; I still need time to think, even though I know they’ll acquit me. A few weeks off will be nice.

“How are you getting to Toronto?”

“I’m being given a taxi to the airport later this evening,” he says. “Then a flight and a taxi on the other end.”

“Good.” There’s not much else I can say, and I find myself staring at the glimmering rails of the tram track, listening intently to the sound of the squeaking flange of the wheels and the chime of the announcer’s voice.

“Be careful,” Kaidan says.

“Careful of what?”

“Cerberus,” he says. “They’re dangerous.”

“I’m not stupid,” I snap.

“I’m serious.” Alenko peers around again, back at the Shepard-Needle, right up to the top, the pinnacle of the Citadel Tower. “Some things never change. It was just like this last time,” he grumbles.

I can understand. The Council dawdled with Sovereign, dawdled with the Reapers, and you’d think they’d have learned by now. But the Council panel I saw seemed disinterested in Cerberus. _“The Illusive Man is dead,”_ they’d said, on seeing the recorder extracted from the operative’s omni-tool, _“it’s highly likely this is just a copycat organisation that’s assumed the Cerberus moniker.”_

“Plus ça change,” I mutter.

“Go into hiding.”

“What?”

“Go into hiding,” Alenko repeats. “Change your name, change your look, live in a hotel for a few weeks.”

“Thanks for the thought,” I say. “I think I’ll pass.”

“I’m serious. They’re dangerous. If they’re coming for me, they’ll come for you because you met me.” Alenko’s face is stony, and I can tell he’s deadly serious.

“Look, even _I_ think the Council’s being lackadaisical,” I begin, “but for god’s sakes, I probably killed their only foot soldier.”

“Don’t underestimate Cerberus,” Alenko warns me as the tram coasts into the platform, brakes squealing and pantograph popping.

“I won’t.” I offer my hand, and shake his, firmly, but gently, noticing again how thin he feels. “Goodbye, Mr Carth.”

He smiles. “Thanks again. For everything.”

The tram from the Citadel to the railway station is easily the best thing about working in C-Sec. The windows are big, and because it runs south-to-north you get fantastic sunsets going down over the fields and the marshes and the estuary, and some even lovelier sunrises in the morning coming up over the North Sea.

It takes around fifty minutes and two changes of train to get back to the tower block where I live, plenty of time to think as the sun goes down.

I think, not for the first time, of calling my mum, but what am I going to say? “Hi, mum, I’ve just killed someone? I just rescued a hermit who just happened to be Commander Shepard’s boyfriend? Momma, just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he’s dead?”

I settle for writing a mail in my head while I’m in the lift to my flat. Maybe I can go up and visit her. And the cat. It’ll be nice to rub Bemis’s lazily purring belly again.

“ _Twenty-third floor. Doors opening, lift going up._ ”

The joy of shift work means I spend ten days away from this place at once, before five days off, before another ten days patrolling the Rama system, and so on. It’s predictable, at least, but the fact I’m halfway across the galaxy for two thirds of the time means a social life is virtually impossible to sustain.

I send the unlocking command to my flat as I leave the lift. The door’s locking mechanism _clicks_ , but it won’t budge. I try locking and releasing it again. Nothing.

It finally takes a good push with my shoulder to force the door open, and I can tell something’s wrong as soon as I stagger back upright. Tablets and books scattered everywhere. Drawers pulled open, and I feel my stomach churn as I examine the door logs, and my suspicions are confirmed—I’ve been burgled.

Shit. It’s probably nothing, and it’s always a risk with shift work when no-one’s watching the flat, but my mind can’t help connecting the dots even though I’m probably extrapolating too much.

_Call the Police. Then NC-Sec. In that order._

_“Police Emergency Service, please state the nature of the incident,”_ the VI says, as I panic and wonder if there’s still someone here.

“I’ve been burgled. Luxor Tower, flat fifty-nine, Flaxman Road, Denmark Hill.”

_“One moment, please.”_

I’m panicking now. Losing patience. _Cricket bat. My dad’s cricket bat._ I clutch the handle as firmly as I can, breathe through my nose, tiptoe around the living room, check the corners.

I’m not sure if I can hear anything. Bathroom. Empty. The toilet water is yellow, though, and it hasn’t been flushed, and now I feel nauseous. Whoever it is, they pissed in _my toilet_ and didn’t have the decency to flush.

“Come out!” I call, quieter than I’d intended, swallowing my own words as they come out. “Come out, I know you’re there!”

I make deliberate steps into the kitchen, checking the corners again. Oven. Sink. “Show yourself!” I bellow, in the most commanding Citadel cop’s voice I can.

He does.

I hear the _swoosh_ of a machete.

_Shit!_

I swing around and the blade makes an incision in the cricket bat, at least halfway through, and I try to remember that judo training from school as I twist the weapons out of the way, to the floor.

He throws a punch, which I dodge as I kick forward, up, between his legs and _fuck_ , he saw that coming! I yelp as he twists my leg round, rams my face and my neck and my boobs into the counter—“ _gah!_ ” and I quickly bring down my remaining leg, find some purchase on his chest and _kick_ —

_“This is a stick-up!”_

That’s not the intruder’s voice. That’s a woman’s voice. Middle Eastern, possibly, heavily accented. _What the…_

The intruder staggers to his feet, grabs a pistol from his holster and points it out into the living room.

“Don’t shoot!” comes that voice again, “we’re unarmed!”

The intruder cocks his pistol, and fingers the trigger, stepping slowly outwards. I breathe, squeeze my eyes shut, and I can taste iron.

_Fuck._

“You sure you’re unarmed?” he says, in a voice that sounds like it could be colonial, perhaps from the Terminus Systems. “If you’re fucking with me I shoot both of you, then the girl.”

“I promise,” comes another voice, this time male, like it could be a turian’s. “We’re unarmed, we’re just burglars, we… uh… we assumed this place would be empty!”

The cricket bat’s still there. So’s the machete, embedded in it. No way I can really use them as a weapon…

I peer around the doorframe, and thank _god_ he’s facing the other way. It’s a turian, a tall, greyish turian with blue face paint and a mask over his eyes, and a quarian, big nose, a shock of brownish hair, purple suit.

I need to think. Fast. And…

_Crack!_

The quarian rams her forehead into the intruder’s with a loud _grunt_ , and an “oof”, and she mutters “moron!” under her breath as the turian pulls out a shotgun and _boom!_

“Fuck!” I shout, involuntarily, as the remains of the intruder’s head blossom and splatter against my carpet.

“Are you OK?” the turian asks, tossing his shotgun aside and lighting up an omni-tool.

“ _What the fuck did you just do!?_ ” I demand, too confused, too damn _angry_ to think about what I’m saying. “You just killed someone _in my living room_! What the _fuck_ is going on?”

_“CALM DOWN!”_

The quarian interrupts with a ferocity I hadn’t expected, and that dumbs me long enough for her to get a few words in edgeways.

“That man was a mercenary. He was sent by Cerberus to assassinate you.”

“I guessed that much,” I spit.

“We’re here to get you out,” she says.

“You’re not the police.”

“You’re right, we’re not,” the turian says.

“Then who are you?” More mercs? Wait. _No,_ I recognise these people… where from… where from… “you’re the Prime Minister of Rannoch, aren’t you?” I say, checking the extranet—christ, that _is_ Tali’Zorah vas Normandy nar Rayya sun Rannoch…

“Dammit!”

“Natasha,” the turian—Primarch Vakarian, of _course_ —says, “we’ve been asked to get you out of here.”

“By whom?” I still can’t get over the fact I have two war heroes and Rannoch’s Prime Minister (or ex-Prime Minister, as a quick extranet search corrects me) in my living room.

Must be the adrenaline.

“We were sent here by a friend,” Tali’Zorah says, pulling the wig away to reveal a more sensible head of teal-coloured hair beneath it, “she’d heard you might be in danger after meeting with Kai— with Major Alenko.”

“A friend of yours, or a friend of mine?”

“Both.” Tali’Zorah’s fringe twitches, and I spot a green spike in her data streams as she enters a command into her omni-hook. “You need to get out of here, fast. Off Earth.”

What!? Not again…

“I’m not leaving Earth,” I insist, “I’ve just been _suspended_ , for god’s sake.”

“Detective,” Vakarian begins, “like it or not, you have a terrorist organisation coming for you. The only place of guaranteed safety for you is at my friend’s base. If you stay on Earth, they’ll go to any length to hunt you down. They’ll come after everything you love. If you stay on Earth, we can’t guarantee _your_ safety, or that of your family.”

God.

Mum still doesn’t know anything. Is she going to come home and find the cat dead and a machete-wielding assassin in the kitchen? _Mum…_

“Can you keep my mother safe?” I ask.

“We’ll do everything we can,” Tali’Zorah says, “but you must go. _Now._ ”

I look at the corpse at her feet. I look around my wrecked flat again. The remains of his brains are starting to smell.

This must be a dream. This is crazy. It _must._ Mustn’t it?

“Give me five minutes to pack a bag.”

*

They have a cab waiting for me outside the tower block, and it takes me around thirty minutes to drive to Heathrow. The taxi doesn’t stop at the termini, not at the gate—it sails straight through, across a runway and towards a VTOL landing pad.

Alenko’s waiting there, wrapped in an oversized double-breasted overcoat that looks around two sizes too large and far too dapper to fit him.

“I was told to meet you here,” I say, “didn’t realise we were skipping customs.”

“Garrus told me a merc broke into your apartment.”

“Yeah.” _Is that Primarch Vakarian’s given name? Yes._

“Are you OK?”

“I’m fine,” I say. “Is this our shuttle?”

“Yeah.”

The interior is swanky, tasteful grey leather with excellent sound insulation. It also says _“welcome aboard, Detective Loftus!”_ in a chirpy, saccharine female voice as I settle into the seats.

“I’ve still got no bloody clue where we’re going,” I say.

_“I am an XT-249 SpaceLimo™ and I operate special luxury shuttle services at affordable prices. Our destination today is the New Town of Rivendell on the garden world of Carpathia, a journey which will take approximately nineteen hours. I contain a lavatory, a shower, fully-stocked refrigerator and a gourmet food VI so that you can enjoy the ride in maximum comfort.”_

“That thing’s creepy,” Kaidan says.

“Who’s paying for all this?” I venture, “it must cost a fortune.”

_“Your SpaceLimo™ Luxury Service to Carpathia has been paid for by… BUYER REDACTED. Please, sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.”_

That’s ominous.

There’s a piercing klaxon from the door as it shuts, and silence before a faint hum rises from the back. We’re away, although I can only tell by the distant sun flaring in the window and the lights of the cities and the roads as we ascend.

_“We’re on our way,”_ the shuttle says, _“sorry for the wait.”_

There was a wait? I wasn’t aware of any delay.

I can see Manchester here, an orangey-yellow cluster against the carpet of Britain. Mum’s down there. Somewhere.

_I hope Tali’Zorah’s keeping her safe._

“Your friend,” I ask, “the one we’re going to see…”

“Yeah?”

“Who is she?”

Kaidan pauses for a moment. “She’s the Shadow Broker.”

I should be shocked, but my life’s just been turned upside down within seventy-two hours and I don’t feel like anything can shock me any more. “Right.”

I’m feeling tired, drowsy, even. Must be the drop after the adrenaline rush of getting attacked and almost killed.

I settle back into the leather, close my eyes, and try and sleep.


	4. The Broker, the Android and the Lord of Rivendell

> **_New Citadel Information Bureau Galactic Codex (22 PBE)_**  
>  Sea of Storms → Locus → Athene → **CARPATHIA**
> 
> Carpathia is a roughly Thessia-normal garden world, a moon of the gas giant Athene, in the early stages of colonisation by Citadel races.
> 
> The bulk of Carpathia’s land mass forms two supercontinents. The larger, Tintagel, provides a staging post for the mining of the Distaff Ocean, which contains extremely large under-sea deposits of element zero, platinum and silver, making it a literal goldmine ripe for exploitation. The smaller, Rutherford, is dense with forests, tundra and arable land.
> 
> At present, the main colonisation efforts are focused on Tintagel, although three private settlements have been established on Rutherford—the newest of which, Rivendell (formerly Rutherford North), has expressed interest in expanding to become a “new town.”
> 
> _NC-Sec TRAVEL ADVICE:_ Citadel ships frequently patrol Carpathia’s airspace. Visitors are advised to book their arrival with Antrozus V.T.S. prior to arrival to ensure their vessels are not flagged as suspicious.

I don’t feel the need to stretch my legs like I usually would after a nineteen-hour journey in a cramped boat. The shuttle was luxurious almost to the point of being annoying. I forgot I was even travelling, and started to get bored.

It lands without so much as a bump, and the door opens immediately. The saccharine voice comes on again.

_“We’ve now arrived on Carpathia,”_ it says, _“may I remind you—have you left anything inside me? I repeat—have you left anything inside me?”_

Nope. All I have are the clothes on my back and that bag with a few nights’ clothing, toothbrush and NC-Sec briefcase, and Alenko probably has even less. That oversized coat came from NC-Sec’s witness protection programme, it turns out.

“Someone’s expecting us,” I say, remembering that we didn’t have to call the V.T.S. for permission to land.

“They’re expecting me.”

The landing pad is in a forest clearing, surrounded by tall trees smelling of caramel. The vegetation on Carpathia is made of a crude sort of muscle, with bark made of solidified aluminium and hydrocarbons, but it still ends up looking roughly like a tree—the wonders of evolution, I suppose.

I can hear wood being chopped.

“Through here,” Alenko says, leading me down a roughly-trodden path through the trees. “It was all pre-fabs last time I was here.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“Yep.”

If this is the Shadow Broker’s base, I can see why no-one’s caught him. Or her.

“Where are the guards?” I would’ve expected the Broker to have a base swarming with mercs, at least, and I’m keeping my eyes out for the flash of a laser sight.

“The Shadow Broker doesn’t need guards,” Alenko says. The sound of wood being chopped has stopped, and I can hear a gentle _squeak, squeak, squeak._

A mech. A little shorter than me, a _lot_ shorter than Alenko, and—

“Hello again, Kaidan,” it says, smiling, but speaking in a voice devoid of any emotion at all. “Dad will be pleased to see you.”

“Eddie. Long time,” Alenko says.

“It has been fifteen years, three months and two days since you last visited us,” the droid—Eddie?—says, “Dad will be pleased to have a friend around.”

It turns to me next, and I recoil on instinct. You can never be too careful with mechs.

“Greetings, Detective Loftus,” it says, “the Shadow Broker told me to expect you.”

“Hello,” I say, gormlessly.

“I am the Enhanced Derivative Defence Intelligence. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Eddie. E-D-D-I. EDDI. Acronym? And why did it say it had a father? It? He?

“Dad is in the house,” EDDI says, turning and striding back past a pile of chopped wood, further along the path, up a hill and into a building, a sort of over-sized log cabin, also made of the silvery-grey Carpathian timber.

Its “father” is, at least, someone I immediately recognise from the vids. He’s engulfed in an over-sized arm chair, wearing a loose white robe and smoking a pipe over a paper copy of _The Enkindler_ , and I can’t help but think that a fez would complete the look perfectly.

“You’re the Shadow Broker.”

Joker Moreau looks up at me quizzically for a moment.

“Dad, I have brought Detective Loftus,” EDDI begins, but he doesn’t bother to finish his sentence as Moreau leaps to his feet, tosses the magazine to the ground and throws himself at Major Alenko.

“Long time, no see, Joker.”

“For god’s sake, Kaidan,” Moreau says, sounding a little short of breath as he separates from him, “we thought you were dead.”

“You weren’t the only ones,” Kaidan says, with a forlorn smile.

“Yeah, I heard you got attacked. Liara’s bringing together the old team again,” Joker says, adjusting his robe and wrapping it around himself as he turns to me. “And I guess you’re the lady who pulled his ass out of there?”

“The same.” His handshake is firm, and I get the feeling that if he’d been stronger it would’ve been ‘crushing.’ “Detective Natasha Loftus, NC-Sec anti-piracy.”

No. _No,_ he can’t be the Shadow Broker. They said the Shadow Broker was a she… and for god’s sake, in the last seventy-two hours I’ve been across the galaxy, twice, attacked in my own home and rescued by a former Prime Minister and a Primarch, and now I’m in the living room of the Reaper War’s most famous memoir-writer. Is this a dream? Is this real life? Is this just fantasy?

“Everyone calls me Joker,” he says, stating the flipping obvious, “I run the place.”

“You run it?”

“Yeah. Long story.”

I check on the extranet: his official title is Lord Jeff Moreau of Rivendell (formerly Rutherford North), and this settlement is on the Citadel Colony Service register. Eventually, this place is going to be a fully-fledged town, a settlement for the burgeoning krogan, human and quarian populations. That certainly explains why the mech was outside chopping wood.

“And… uh…” Joker says, and I snap out of my reverie to listen to him, “no, I’m not the Shadow Broker.”

“I guessed not.”

*

The Shadow Broker, as it turns out, is in a bunker down at the bottom of the hill, its entrance hidden between two trees and a wooden veneer. The illusion is destroyed as EDDI issues the command to open the door—it parts like curtains, and the corridor inside is metallic, pre-fabricated, reinforced and I wonder if the whole thing is like a Faraday cage.

There’s one room, circular, with a large holo-table in the centre, vid-screens on every wall and… an _asari_ leaning over a comms desk, and, again, someone whom I recognise immediately.

Even considering the fact I’ve been introduced to people I learned about in history lessons in the last three days, I wasn’t expecting _that._ The infamous Shadow Broker being an archaeologist is a turn-up for the books.

A little blue drone swivels to face us, and lights up with a chirpy voice.

_“Major Alenko and Detective Loftus have—”_

She looks around, and her eyes snap open. “Hold my calls, Glyph,” she snaps, leaping for Alenko and hugging him tightly. “Kaidan… it’s so good to see you again.”

She sounds _exactly_ like she does in the vids. Hmm. My mum always thought Liara T’Soni’s voice was annoying.

“Detective Loftus,” she smiles, turning to me, “thank you for coming.” We settle for a handshake.

“I didn’t have much choice,” I say, “I was attacked in my kitchen.”

“I know how that feels,” she says, “and don’t worry about your mother. You can trust Garrus and Tali, they’re arranging for her to be kept safe.”

How did she know that was what I was worried about? Probably a guess. A good one, though. “Thank you, Dr. T’Soni,” I burble, sheepishly, scanning the room.

“Liara, please.” She flicks a few switches on her control desk, and a door opens to a conference table in the corner. “I get the feeling we’ll be getting to know each other quite well.”

The little drone hovers towards me, and I notice it’s got a mug of coffee before it, levitated, suspended perfectly in mid-air. Perfect long white with two sugar-free sweeteners.

“How did you know how I liked my coffee?”

“I didn’t.” Liara frowns. “Did I?”

_“I extracted the preferences from your kitchen coffee machine as part of your dossier, Detective.”_

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“It does that,” Liara says, “tries to be too helpful. Shall we?”

*

It takes me at least half an hour to wake up properly the next morning.

There’s always a moment or two of panic as you wake up in someone else’s house, an unease that you can never get used to as you open your eyes on an unfamiliar room in another person’s bed. This time it’s the gravity, one point one times Earth normal, that throws me off: I’ve gained nine and a half extra kilograms.

I’ve been meaning to _lose_ weight. Ugh. My face looks a mess, too. Freckles, mousy blondish hair, and it takes effort to pull it into an expression I don’t find ugly.

I might tone down the freckles and go brown again. It’ll take a few months, but I definitely preferred it that way.

The shower is powerful, at least, and I have vague memories of unpacking the contents of the bag. Sensible t-shirts, trousers, mock leather jacket, underwear, raincoat. The boots have a few more wounds on them, a couple more scuff marks on the toes from the fist-fight a few days ago. They’ll survive. Those things have lasted four years and they’ve easily got another ten in them.

I need a coffee.

I dress and head downstairs. Another problem with staying in someone else’s house: manners. When is it polite to be up and about? When’s it polite to use a bathroom or shower? Best hope you don’t have a bleeding zit or a scab somewhere that stains the bedclothes.

“Good morning, Detective.”

I jump and spin to face its source: another android, taller, this time, with a deeper, feminine voice and skin weathered through combat and time.

“EDI. Good morning.”

“Will you be requiring breakfast? I can prepare a meal for you.”

Before I can argue, she’s produced a platter with two slices of toast, bacon, poached eggs and a glass of wumbleberry juice with coffee extract. “Thank you, EDI,” I say, turning the egg over with my fork and examining its texture, “but I could’ve made that myself.”

“It’s no problem.” She seats herself opposite me at the kitchen table. “This platform is fully charged and was idling. There is no benefit to leaving it inactive when it can be tasked.”

The egg is delicious, already seasoned with exactly the right amount of salt and pepper, and the bacon and the toast is perfectly crisp. “Wow,” I scoff, “this is delicious. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she says.

“You must share your secret,” I smile.

“There is no secret. Precision timing according to the cooking equipment, high-quality ingredients and careful measurements of seasoning are all that is required.”

Hah. “I meant your algorithms.”

She ‘smiles,’ and a little air of satisfaction creeps into her voice. “It was a joke.” A couple of Fortran files land in my public directory. “I hope you find them useful.”

“Thank you.” I take a swig from the wumbleberry juice, swilling it around the back of my throat before swallowing. Warmed, zesty but with a minty sweetness. Also lovely.

The kitchen has large French windows leading out onto a balcony, just peeking out over the forest canopy. I can see the hill on which the house is built is part of a ridge, a chain of similar hills leading off to the east. There’s a radio tower on the nearest, a telescope observatory on the next.

“Where’s Major Alenko?” I inquire, absently.

“Kaidan went with Jeff down to the cenote,” EDI says, pointing to a clearing a few hundred metres away. “Jeff likes to go for a swim in the mornings as a substitute for showering.”

Jeff. Not Joker. This mech _married_ him. EDI herself, I know, still lives in the quantum blue boxes in the bowels of the hill, retrieved from the _Normandy_ when she was consigned to a museum. The mech was also a Cerberus creation turned good.

Hypotheses about human/robot sex spring to mind, but I don’t care for it that much. EDI seems… happy, though. Unusually mature for a true AI that isn’t an amalgamated hivemind, too.

I thank EDI for the breakfast, and trudge off towards the cenote in the distance, stuffing my hands into my pockets. It’s not cold, but it’s chilly enough for my breath to condense as I breathe out.

Down the hill, and towards the edge, towards the sound of the waterfall. It takes less than two minutes for me to plod up to the rock where I can see Major Alenko sitting, hunched around his knees, wrapped in both a tatty branded N7 hoodie and the stupid jacket he got from Witness Protection.

“Morning,” he says, “I didn’t expect you’d be up this early.”

“Comes with the job. Where’s Joker?”

“In there.”

It takes me a while to notice the little beige silhouette in the water, slowly pushing forward with breast strokes towards the waterfall, the rising sun casting an orange glow across the length of the sinkhole.

“Have you seen a picture of him before the end of the war?” Alenko asks. I haven’t, even though I know he had Vrolik’s syndrome and was physically crippled—a quick search of the extranet finds his Alliance file photo.

He’s bulkier now, less skinny and weak, more slender and agile. His memoir talks at length about him being able to run, properly, for the first time.

“I have now.”

“It really was like a miracle.” Alenko cups his hands in front of his mouth and blows into them, warming his palms. “And… I mean, look at him. He’s happy. Twenty years ago he could break his ribs if he sneezed too hard.”

Joker Moreau, former crippled helmsman of the _Normandy_ , now able-bodied Lord of Rivendell, building a colony world from scratch and married to a sexy robot lady who used to be his co-pilot. I don’t have anything to say, really.

Kaidan mutters something under his breath, something that sounds like “I could do with a miracle right now,” but it’s lost on the wind before I can properly process it.

The connection to the radio tower is a little poor from here, but I can still get a signal for an extranet connection. Mum’s safe. She’s ordered her shopping. It’s now Friday afternoon (at least, it is on Earth: right here, on a thirty-one hour day, it’s eight o’clock on a day with no real name) and she’s still OK, she’s not been accosted by a hired gun yet. There’s mail from a private address, too. _“Your mother is safe and we have people keeping a close eye on her. GV.”_

Something glimmers in the corner of my eye. Something metallic that Alenko is turning over in his hands, inspecting.

“What’s that?” I ask, about half a second before recognising it. It’s the atomic actualiser, that component from his clone experiment on Anteros Station.

Knew it.

“It’s the—”

“I know now.”

He’s cleaned it a bit, disconnected the tubes from the ports on the side. Presumably he’s kept it in his pocket, all this time.

“I thought you’d thrown it away,” I muse.

“Nope.”

He’s got that thing in his hand, tossing it around like it’s an apple or a cricket ball, as if it hadn’t been the thing that almost got him killed.

“Cerberus is after you for that thing,” I say.

“Yup.” He doesn’t look at me, instead glaring at the horizon.

“Don’t you think it’d be better to destroy it, or something?” I suggest. “That thing’s made you a target.”

He looks down at it for a moment, and thinks, turning it in his hand. “I know, I know,” he whispers, “it’s… it’s just…”

That thing was being used in the cloning experiments. He thought he could use it to bring back Commander Shepard. Thought he could use it to bring back the man he loved, and it was this that almost got him killed.

So it’s this that causes me, half a second later, to reach over, deftly snatch the atomic actualiser from Alenko’s hands, and toss it into the sinkhole.

“ _Shit!_ ” he cries, leaping to his feet and frantically searching for a way down to the water, skittering down the hill path and shouting at Joker.

What did I just do? _Why?_ Dammit. I suppose it’s because in the last four days my life has been turned upside down and I’ve just had bloody enough.

I need to stop being so impulsive.

“Is this it?” I hear from the cenote, and a hand comes up with something small and metallic clasped within. He starts swimming for the edge of the water as I begin my descent.

Alenko takes the component from him, spins it in his hands, tries to shake the water out, murmuring “shit, _shiiit_ ” under his breath.

I have no idea if this groundwater’s saline or not.

Moreau stands next to him, peering at the actualiser. It’s only now that I realise he’s wearing absolutely nothing.

I grimace in a face that I know is hideous, and turn away, averting my eyes.

“What happened?”

“It fell out of my hands,” Alenko lies, and I feel like I should own up but I _can’t_ and I’m not even sure why I did it.

“Looks fine…” Joker says, “if you make sure the terminals are clean… just leave it out to dry, put some fresh eezo in it.”

“Yeah.” I hear Alenko inhale, and whisper “shit” again. “I… ah… thank you,” he says. “You’d better put some clothes on.”

Twenty years and newfound mobility may have improved Joker Moreau’s health and his looks tenfold, but it hasn’t done anything to make human genitals any less grotesque. Then again, he _is_ Lord of Rivendell. He can exercise in whatever he pleases.

It takes only a few seconds for another mech—WENDI, this one is called—to show up with a towel and a message. “Tali’s party is entering the atmosphere,” she says, “they’re approximately six minutes away.”

Moreau heads back towards the house, scrubbing the towel through his hair and shivering in the cold. Alenko waits for a moment, squinting at me in something that’s too soft to count as a glare.

Shit.

“Sorry,” I blurt, “not sure what I was…”

“I understand.” I can see daggers behind his eyes, panic and fury in his data streams masked by composure and integrity. “Just… don’t do that again.”

“I am sorry,” I say again, unsure why, feeling gormless and guilty and wanting to get out of his sight.

He doesn’t say another word, turning and heading back to the house.

*

Primarch Vakarian and Tali’Zorah are in the bunker, along with two men I don’t recognise. Dr. T’Soni is there too, and she’s set up a conference table with her info drone hovering at the head of the table, next to a holographic vid-screen.

Alenko sits two seats away from me, enough to avoid eye contact. He reaches over to shake hands with the two new arrivals, as does Joker, who sits between us, thankfully fully clothed.

“For the benefit of those who’ve just arrived,” Liara announces, “I suggest we start at the very beginning.”

She brings up a slide, a star map of the Rama system. “About five days ago, Detective Natasha Loftus of NC-Sec’s anti-piracy operation was patrolling the airspace of Anteros. Her shuttle was wrecked here—” she switches to a map, the terrain of Anteros with markers for the station and for the shuttle crash site, “—some twenty-eight kilometres east of Anteros Station. Natasha was knocked out in the crash, and the black box was damaged, but evidence suggests it was an electronic overload that caused the shuttle crash, and not a physical shot.”

She runs over the details that I’ve run over in my head scores of times already, but they still feel palpably unreal. I’m a patrol officer, a low-ranking cop born to a professor and a miner, and now I’m surrounded by faces I learned from history books at school and my mum’s under armed guard. It’s all feeling more unreal by the second.

“Around forty minutes before Natasha woke, a shuttle began transmitting a faked NC-Sec signal, claiming to be a rescue craft,” Liara says, continuing, displaying a read-out of the traffic logs.

“It could’ve been an unmarked shuttle,” the taller of the two new arrivals, a slender, dark-skinned man with a goatee interjects, “but there’s no way that shuttle could’ve been C-Sec. They stopped using Kodiaks years ago.”

“Quite,” I say. “The signal did seem authentic, though. If they hadn’t shut down the router in the comms tower, I don’t think either of us would’ve grown suspicious.”

“The shuttle had only one person aboard,” Liara announces, giving me a sideways glance. I avert my eyes as she brings up photographs of the corpse—I know it’s silly, but I’m still not sure I can get over the fact I killed someone stone-dead. “Andreas Campbell, freelance mercenary, wearing this exact uniform.”

“Mercs doesn’t sound like Cerberus,” Joker says, leaning forward to the table. “They never used to hire freelancers.”

“I’ll come back to that later,” Liara says, and I hear the slide move forward again. I turn back: the corpse has gone, replaced by a still from a vid call. “Campbell then broke down the door while Natasha went to fetch her pistol, and activated this vid-call on his omni-tool.”

She starts the video. A recording, of that face, and that voice.

_“You!”_ comes Kaidan’s voice, tinny, recorded, and the face of the Illusive Man responds with crystal clarity.

“You know why my agent is here, Major Alenko.”

_“How did you find out where I was? What about Loftus, is she part of this?”_

“We arranged for Loftus’s shuttle to crash,” the face replies, dismissively. “ I hope you don’t mind us using her as a diversion.”

_“What do you want?”_

“You know what I want, Major. Give me the atomic actualiser.”

I look to my side, to Kaidan as his recording denies knowledge of the thing he’s turning about in his hands right now. It doesn’t look much the worse for wear, although it’s still shimmering with dampness. Now I hear my own voice, “I could’ve died,” and the face replies to me with my first name.

“Natasha, and yet, you didn’t—”

“It’s Detective Loftus,” and the recording fizzles and cuts out.

Momentary silence. About five seconds where no-one knows quite what to say, the frame frozen with the Illusive Man’s face part-dissolved.

“The Illusive Man is dead,” Primarch Vakarian announces. “There’s no way, he must be a copycat.”

He’s right. Liara told me that the Illusive Man from the war—Jack Harper, a former mercenary—was dug up from the wreckage of the Citadel in the Pacific, much like the salvaged component Kaidan’s got in his hand right now.

“The organisation was effectively decapitated when Shepard destroyed Cronos Station,” Liara agrees, “so I think we can be somewhat certain that this organisation is a copycat using the Cerberus name.”

Flashes of the multiple IRAs, the dozen or so al-Qaedas and the multiple extremist wings of Terra Firma that popped up after the end of the War thunder through my omni-hook. “Copycat or not,” I chime, “he’s out to kill me and Kaidan.”

“Yes,” Liara says, hurriedly switching to the next slide. “After Kaidan recounted his experience to the Council, he was enrolled in a witness protection programme. I was watching remotely when I received word from one of my contacts that a high-value target had been marked for assassination in South London—in Natasha’s apartment.”

The mercenary in my kitchen, who had the gall to use my toilet and didn’t even bother to flush. “Yup.”

“Luckily, Garrus and Tali were a short distance away on a diplomatic visit—”

“We… we were actually on our honeymoon,” Vakarian interrupts, cautiously, “and we were on a different continent.”

”—yes,” Liara says, pausing for a moment before refusing her sentence. “I was able to ask them to hurry to Natasha’s apartment, and they were able to kill the mercenary they sent to assassinate her.”

Another corpse goes up on the vid-screen, but I can’t be bothered to look away this time. I’m feeling a little numb.

“Victor Nord, formerly a member of the Blue Suns, turned freelancer.” Liara turns to Tali’Zorah, who takes a moment to snap out of her reverie.

“Yes,” she says, brushing the green swirls of her hair out of her way as she activates an omni-tool and takes control of the vid-screen. “While Garrus made sure Natasha was safe, I took a dump of Nord’s omni-hook. Specifically, I took a look at the location logs.”

She brings up a star map, plotting points on it with dates. Tuesday, Earth, Monday, Arcturus Prime relay, last Thursday, Omega. “He spent four days on Omega,” Tali’Zorah continues, “and the interesting part is that if we cross-reference that with the data from Campbell’s omni-tool… we find _this._ ”

Another trail lights up on the map. They were _both_ on Omega, in the Kareem Hotel, for two overlapping days.

“That can’t be coincidence,” she says. “And I think… Liara?”

“Yes, one moment.” She assumes control of the screen again, and brings up some still-frame video. “I obtained the security footage from the hotel suite they shared. Room seven five four.”

Two figures, Nord, Campbell, and a _third_ , and as his face swings round for just a moment, I recognise it—

“That’s the Illusive Man,” I whisper, “the… _new_ Illusive Man.”

“This is _very_ unlike Cerberus,” Liara notes. “Harper would never meet anyone face-to-face, he’d always use a vid-comm from his base. Also, if we take a close look at his face…”

Two faces appear side-by-side. Superficially similar (cybernetic blue eyes, silvery hair, pointy shape) but, upon closer inspection, entirely different. “The one on the left is Harper,” Liara says, “and the one on the right is the _new_ Illusive Man.”

“Look at his nose,” says the shorter one of the two men I don’t recognise, “it looks like he’s had plastic surgery.”

“Exactly, Robert.” _Robert._ That’s his name. “I’ve tried running an ident check on his face, but Glyph hasn’t been able to turn up anything within any reasonable tolerance.”

Altering his face to fool face detection checks. He’s thorough, I’ll give him that.

“What about the hotel?” the Primarch enquires, “there has to be some kind of trace evidence.”

“Usually, I’d expect it to have been cleaned by now, but… _conveniently_ …” Liara says, her face twisting into unease, “one of the stewards was murdered there around five days ago. The scene is still sealed off.”

A crime scene sealed off for five days? Even for the Terminus Systems, and Aria’s exceptionally thorough police force, five days is a _long_ time.

“In that case,” Tali’Zorah says, standing, “I propose we send someone to investigate. I can pull some diplomatic strings with Aria, if needs be.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Liara taps a few commands on her omni-tool. “She’s already expecting us.”

She takes a look at Alenko, who’s remained silent for the last four minutes or so. He seems engrossed in the atomic actualiser, his mouth perpetually twisting, breaths laboured and punctuated by movements of saliva.

“I’ll lead the party, and Kaidan, you can come with me. Tali, you can take charge of the technical elements,” she says.

Now she turns her attention to me. “Natasha… I’d like you to join our party to Omega.”

Shit. I should’ve expected something like this to happen. “Why?”

“Suspended or not, you’re still a detective with NC-Sec. You have ranking authority—”

“In Citadel Space,” I interrupt. “On Omega I have as many legal powers as a croissant.”

“On Omega, legal powers make no difference,” Vakarian says. “As long as you’re not planning to screw with Aria…”

“I’m _not_ going on a shore party to Omega.” I lean back in my chair, feeling a blush rising in my face. “I’m sorry.”

Silence. A few pairs of eyes glare at me, and Liara is drawn with a staunchly neutral expression.

“Listen. In the last week, I have been attacked in my own home. I’ve seen two people have their brains blown out in front of my eyes,” I say, feeling a little breathless and struggling to keep my voice down, “I’ve been suspended from my job and I’ve _just had enough._ ”

*

I need a walk.

I march up to the top of the hill, across to the cliff edge over the cenote, and back down again. The clouds are a deep grey, and I can sense it’s going to rain, so I shuffle back into Joker’s house, trying to avoid begin seen.

That hope lasts for all of nine seconds, as I enter the main room and find the senior Moreaus in the armchair, Joker huddled in EDI’s lap, the hearth roaring.

He’s sleeping, in an oversized woollen sweater, and their hands are clasped together. That _is_ sweet, I’ll admit. Happy family, a former cripple and a robot.

It’s quiet, though. EDI’s drone is recharging, Moreau is snoring a little, the fire is crackling quietly, and I can hear a gentle howl of wind.

I’m not sure I can stand it.

I look to the next room, where the man with the goatee, Robert and Kaidan are watching a movie on a giant vid screen. _Blasto Begins._

They don’t acknowledge my presence as I sidle in. They’ve got the subtitles on, and it’s getting quite close to the bit where I have a cameo. And sure enough, there I am, a few pixels of freckles and ginger.

I was _ginger_ then. The Ginny Weasley look. I didn’t particularly like it, but at least it beat Alenko’s attempt at Robinson Crusoe.

The three men watching the vid make no acknowledgement that I’m here. I’m not even sure they noticed me. I’m the Invisible Man.

_Christ._

The rain begins to patter outside, and in a flash of serendipity I make a run for the bunker.

“Natasha,” Liara says, looking up from her holo-console as the doors slide open, “you look soaked.”

“I’m from Manchester, I’m used to it.” An uneasy pause and a held smile tells me the joke’s lost on her.

_Fuck it. What’s the point in pussyfooting?_

“I know I’m probably going to regret this,” I continue, “and I know I’m probably going to be no use, but… if you still want me, I’ll come with you to Omega tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she says. “Of course, we’ll be very pleased to have you along.”

I force a smile. “Good.”

“Tell me, have you been to Omega before?”

“Can’t you find out?” I snark, “what kind of information broker are you?”

She doesn’t say a word. She’s ignoring me.

“No. I haven’t. I’ve heard stories, though. I had a boyfriend who was stationed there for a while.”

“The stories are mostly antiquated,” Liara says, “it’s quite a different place now to how it was before the War. Reformed, even.”

She looks up for a second.

“Although I’d still advise wearing a stab vest.”


	5. Caliban's Dream

The journey only takes six hours, this time, but the shuttle is still exceptionally cramped. When we _do_ arrive, we find ourselves in a well-lit, airy docking bay with a young asuri attendant in a well-cut suit standing beside the door.

“Welcome to Omega, Dr. T’Soni!” he beams as Liara clambers from the shuttle. “The Executive will be delighted to see you. I trust your journey was pleasant?”

“It was… passable,” she replies, seeming a little taken aback by his ‘direct’ approach. Is he supposed to be a customs officer? He’s acting more like a personal concierge.

“I can arrange for a larger shuttle for the return journey, should you require it—”

“That won’t be necessary,” she says, cutting the attendant off mid-sentence.

“Of course. If you change your mind, just tell the Executive and we’ll make arrangements immediately,” he says, opening the door. “I’ve been asked to direct you to meet with her at your earliest convenience.”

“I’ll be heading there now,” Liara says.

Kaidan steals a glance at the concierge as we file through the exit door. “Is that a male asari?” he whispers to me, once we’re out of earshot.

“An asuri? Yes.”

“Hmm.” I can understand why he hasn’t seen one before. When he disappeared into his bunker, people were still arguing over whether it was possible—or, indeed, ethical—to do the genetic manipulation required to produce something like a male asari.

“He’s very young,” I tell him, “you should see what they look like when they start to mature, around age twelve.”

“What happens?”

“Their tentacles grow into a beard.”

He considers this as we emerge onto a large public plaza, artificial sunlight casting long shadows across the metallic floor—and the _noise_ , god, a chirpy, chattering track from the club across the market plaza, underscoring a hubbub of bartering, credit-wrangling, footsteps, rustling and bleeping as I notice that Alenko is clearly gritting his teeth.

I hear him muttering “too much noise” under his breath as we follow Liara, carving through the crowds, past the cathedral-like entrance to _Afterlife_ , and cutting straight past the queue to the express elevators.

The Executive’s office is at the very tip of the mined-out husk of Omega, the pinnacle of the biosphere. “It’s impressive,” Tali’Zorah concedes as we step from the lift. “Even the computational power they’re using to maintain a mass effect field like this must be horrendous.”

The office is on a mezzanine level, with a spiral staircase leading to glass platform. Above us is the orange, reddish swathe of the nebula, speckled with the twinkles of nascent stars and proto-stars, and as we emerge onto the platform I realise it’s open to space—the air shell probably only extends a metre or so above the walls of the office, and I can hear the hum of the mass effect core that’s generating it.

Executive Aria herself is sat on a large, full-length couch, a tablet in one hand and a turian bodyguard in the corner. She peers over the edge of the computer, tosses it to the ground, and fixes us with intent glares, her mouth stuck in something that feels more dangerous than a pout.

She nods, and Liara, Kaidan and Tali all seat themselves beside her. She stares at me for a moment, a steely gaze framed by the arched markings above her nose.

“The couch isn’t going to move for you,” she says, and I scoot over, face flushed red, and sit beside Tali’Zorah. _Shit_. Made a fool of myself in less than ten minutes.

Now the Executive smiles, and meets Liara’s gaze. “Liara… it’s been a long while.”

“Indeed it has, Aria.” Good. They’re on first-name terms, that softens up the embarrassment in my gut a little. “I trust you received the documents I sent you?”

“Certainly.” She glances beyond Liara, to me, to Kaidan, to Tali. “Although you didn’t say you were bringing an invasion party with you.”

“They all have good reason to be here,” Liara says, the joke missing her completely. “Thank you for agreeing to help.”

“My husband sends his regards,” Tali’Zorah chimes.

“Consider them returned,” the Executive says, leaning forward, “and let’s cut to the chase.”

Liara shows her the footage from Campbell’s omni-tool, maps of both mercenaries’ movement over the last few days.

“I _knew_ it,” Aria ejaculates as the lines converge on the Kareem Hotel. “Markin Helios. Neck got broken by one of the cleaners.”

Cleaners. Most cleaning services these days are outsourced to the geth or to LOKI. The cleaners wouldn’t do that… unless they were hacked? Possibly.

“I suspected you might have had a hunch,” Liara smiles.

“So, what can I do for you?”

“We need access to the crime scene,” Tali’Zorah says. “We have a face for the new Cerberus chairman, but he’s clearly had some kind of plastic surgery. He’s not passing any of our face recognition filters.”

“Luckily for you, I have a visiting expert on terrorist organisations.” Aria nods to her security guard, and he vanishes down the staircase. “There’s a cab waiting for you,” she says, “ask to meet Nicola Binder. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”

*

Aria’s cab drops us off at the base of the street, and it’s a long, silent walk to the hotel at the end.

The inner alleys of Omega are at the perfect median of the sunlit plaza and Aria’s astronomical al-fresco headquarters. The walls are plastasteel, tinted a few tastefully pale shades of the primary colours, punctuated every so often by a large advertising billboard.

_Lightning-fast stock trading over QEC, video buffering, sanity checking and the space to call mum? There’s an app for that! ¡Tuesday! (formerly Apex) omni-hooks, for the best multi-threading performance in the universe!_

Tali’Zorah mutters something about Kaidan’s omni-tool being ancient, an old Logic Arrest model. “You should definitely consider moving to an omni-hook,” she says. Alenko ignores her.

_“Some men just want to enkindle the world!” “Enkindle THIS!” The Jellyfish Stings, coming soon._

This Blasto flick seems like it could actually be very good. In my restlessness last night I watched all the originals in one go. They _were_ awful. Makes me a tiny bit prouder for my two minutes and sixty pixels of screen-time in _Blasto Begins._

_With advance fares from only ninety-nine credits, speed to the Citadel with Thunderbolt Airlines—the fastest service to Earth, guaranteed!_

If it wasn’t for the billboards, with the glass doors and the muted decor this place could easily be the inside of the Shepard-Needle.

The Kareem Hotel is set slightly backwards from the rest of the alley, its entrance set apart by a pair of sliding double-doors, left open, with a mercury blue police line straddling the entrance.

“Get me Nicola Binder,” Liara says, and the officer standing on duty nods.

“Go on ahead, she’s in suite seven four. Don’t forget to put your barriers up,” she says, “we’ve been ordered not to let that crime scene get contaminated.”

There’s a sparkle of bleeps from all of us as we switch our kinetic barriers to “envelope” mode, and a string of reassuring ‘pings’ as we cross the cordon. Although I technically do this for a living, piloting a shuttle around while scanning for mercs and privateers is nothing like being on the field.

It’s exciting. I might ask for a transfer when (or if) I get re-instated.

Suite number 74 is surrounded by people who, like us, have footsteps that flare blue and make a slight _humming_ sound. The barrier’s very finely tuned, barely more than a micron’s shell around our bodies, but I can see Alenko wobbling on his feet a little.

“How much RAM’s in that thing?” I ask, as he checks his omni-tool and makes a few adjustments.

“Not a lot. It’s optimised for shielding, not crime-scene investigation,” he replies, as Liara passes into the hotel suite.

“Miranda!”

Binder (although wasn’t her first name Nicola?) is a tall, slender woman with a bun of hair dyed blonde, dressed in a grey corduroy jacket and black, skin-tight trousers. Her data streams seem abnormally regular, angular, even.

She waves at the door, and it closes behind us. “Liara. It’s been a while.” Binder glances at Tali’Zorah, and at Kaidan. “Although I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to blow my cover in front of every last police officer on Omega.”

Cover? Is she—

“I knew you were investigating Cerberus, but I had no idea you were on Omega,” Liara says.

“I came as soon as I found out the Illusive Man was here. Aria pulled some strings, gave me a false identity…” Her eyes alight on me. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Neither do I,” I say, offering my hand. “Natasha Loftus, NC-Sec anti-piracy.”

“You can trust her,” Liara interjects, “she’s heavily implicated anyway.”

“Miranda Lawson,” she says, taking my hand and shaking it firmly. “I worked with Commander Shepard to take down the Collector base.”

“It’s my pleasure,” I mumble. Her voice is hard-edged and stoic, an Australian battle-axe completely mismatched with the almost implausibly attractive features of her face, the slender curve of her figure. I look her up on the extranet. Genetically engineered, disappeared from public life nine years ago. I thought so.

“What have you got for us, then?” Tali’Zorah asks.

“I have the original security footage, hi-res,” Lawson says. “You could probably get a DNA sample from somewhere in here. The geth platform that killed the steward is also being held in the Rannoch Embassy. Just as well you’re here, Tali.” She nods to Tali’Zorah, who bobs her head prudently in return.

“Does the footage have sound?” I ask.

“Yes. I’m sending you the full file.” Lawson activates an omni-tool, but I can see that it’s in “shell” mode, just an interface on top of the omni-hook I can see looped over her ear. She probably uses it for convenience.

The file appears in Lawson’s public directory—it’s security footage, from all cameras in the hotel. At fifteen oh three station time, a guest in a long coat and a wide-brimmed fedora checked into the hotel to visit the room Victor Nord and Andreas Campbell were sharing. The Illusive Man, although it takes me a moment to recognise him from the angle of the camera as he removes his hat and coat.

His voice sounds very different. Deeper, gruff, gravelly, stoic. Nothing like the raised pleas he gave in the vid message on Anteros.

They discuss a few things. The plan to monitor for patrol vessels, and bring it down with an EMP as a ruse—so _that’s_ how they did it. Payment, so it’s very clear they’re mercs. Lawson has annotated the vid—mercenaries and face-to-face meetings are definitely not the style of the old Illusive Man.

From this angle, I think, for a moment, that I can recognise his face. But I can’t think where from, I can’t think _who_ , and if I set my omni-hook to run an ident check it’ll run a blank because it doesn’t have any degree of intuition. Bugger.

The steward, Markin Helios, enters at sixteen seventy nine. Why? Room service? No, he would’ve knocked. A few cross references with crime reports, and Helios’s work history, and… of course.

“Helios was a kleptomaniac,” I mutter. “There were around fourteen crime reports for missing items at this hotel, mostly jewellery. He worked at a consort’s chambers beforehand, there are twenty-seven reports of things going missing there.”

“Good catch,” Lawson says, “but I doubt it’s relevant.”

I resume viewing. Whatever Helios was doing, it cost him his life: a challenge from the mercs, a brief but powerful melee, the glow of an omni-tool on the Illusive Man’s arm and the _squeak, squeak_ of a cleaner platform creeping up behind him and snapping his neck.

The geth crumples shortly afterwards, collapsing and shutting down, presumably as a result of the hack. The Illusive Man panics, shuffles back into his coat and fedora, and hot-foots his way through the corridors, and out of the hotel.

“He was in there for three hours and he didn’t light a fag,” I mumble, peering towards the ashtray, a holographic evidence marker hovering above it. “So he doesn’t smoke.”

“Harper smoked like a chimney,” Kaidan says.

“Quite.” I scan the room again. “So, if we want DNA, what alternates do we have?”

Tali’Zorah reaches behind her ear and activates a switch on her omni-hook. A little drone appears, flash-forged above her head, and begins to glide towards the en-suite bathroom. “Chiktikka will take care of that,” she says, glaring at Kaidan. He’s still watching the video file.

I’ve been talking to computers for all my life, and it’s hard for me to understand why someone would willingly watch things like this, in real time, on a cumbersome machine you can’t even wear in the shower.

“You should really consider moving to an omni-hook, Kaidan,” Tali says, again.

“Maybe.” Alenko stops the video, pushing it away for later. “Maybe I’m just a Luddite.”

There’s a _bleep_ from the next room. The drone’s found something, in the cupboard. DNA? Possibly…

The bathroom is minimalist, tiled, grey, and with a wooden cupboard adjacent to the washbasin. The drone squeaks loudly, indicating towards the top drawer.

“Does anyone have any gloves?” Tali asks.

“Barrier,” I remind her. She doesn’t need latex gloves: with her barrier in the envelope mode, she’d have a hard time contaminating _anything_ on the cupboard’s patina.

Gently, she reaches forward, hooking her inner two fingers against the knob, and pulls. The drawer glides out, and—

_“Out!”_ she bellows. Explosives!

I sound the alarm, and dart out of the room after her, keeping a close eye on the charges. “There’s detonation charges in that cupboard! Everybody out!” I shout, pushing past the door as a piercing klaxon sounds from nowhere. “Move it! Move, move!”

There’s an electronic crackle, and a _grunt_ to my side—Kaidan has tripped over, unable to run properly with an improperly-adjusted barrier. I disable his omni-tool, grab him by the arm, and haul him into the throng of moving people—police officers, detectives, civilians and mechs from the shops next door, and—

“I’m fine,” Alenko says, freeing himself from my grasp and matching my gait as we join the stampede.

Twenty metres. Twenty-five. Thirty. Forty. No way of telling how heavy those charges were—

_BOOM._

The streets and corridors of Omega amplify the sound of the blast, and there’s a second or so of searing radiant heat on our backs, blinding light, and screams, and another alarm joins the myriad existing warning sounds as the fire bulkheads to the hotel seal.

Alenko stops, leans against a billboard for _The Jellyfish Stings_ and looks around, out of breath.

“You OK?” I ask him.

“Yeah. Wasn’t expecting that,” he says, breathing uneasily as a rapid-dispatch ambulance tram rolls to a stop overhead, doctors and mechs dropping into the corridor.

I dial up a comm channel. “Liara, Tali, I’m just outside the Kandorus office… where’s Mir— Ms Binder?”

_“Present, and unharmed,”_ comes Lawson’s voice. _“Good catch, both of you. Is Kaidan injured?”_

“Fine,” Kaidan breathes, “just a little out of breath.”

_“I’m sorry, say again?”_ says Tali’Zorah, _“we’ll come to find you.”_

The mic on my earpiece wouldn’t have picked it up. And I wrecked his omni-tool. Dammit.

“He said he’s fine,” I repeat, peering around, furtively, “but he’s…”

My heart skips a beat as I notice something standing in the corner, at the end of the alley, staring intently at us. Some _one._

Someone with a pointy face, buzz-cut silvery black hair, slim build, in a dress suit and a long coat—

“Over there,” I whisper to Kaidan. “Two o’clock, do you think…”

“That’s…”

_The Illusive Man._

“Hey!” I shout, taking off on my left foot and darting after him. He vanishes around the corner, and if I’m not careful we’ll lose him in the crowds.

“Dammit,” Alenko pants, catching up to me as I reach the junction.

“Right, he went right!” Heading for the central chamber, the ring roads. “Come on, Major! We’re losing him!”

_“Tali’Zorah to Loftus,”_ the comm crackles, _“what’s going on?”_

“It’s the Illusive Man!” I pant, “Just spotted, heading down… Street 71, heading towards the ring road. _Short_ hair, long black coat!”

_“You’re sure?”_ Miranda asks.

“Positive!”

_“On my way. Binder out,”_ she shouts, as I barge between a couple holding hands and vault over an advertising board.

_Run. Run. Run._ I was never any good at running, but I’m there, at the main road, and—

“Where’s he gone?” Lawson demands, peering to the left and the right. I can’t see him anywhere, my omni-hook can’t pick him out—

“Security footage,” I whisper, as Kaidan finally catches up with us.

Three minutes ago. Two minutes ago. One minute ago, walked off, vanished into the crowds—

“He’s on the bus!” Kaidan yells, ferociously pointing to the bus accelerating away from the stand and up to the skyway. “He’s on the…”

“Shiiiiit!” I give chase, not sure what I’m hoping to achieve. I’ll never outrun it. “Kaidan, you’re a biotic, can’t you charge it or something?”

“I’m not charging a bus!”

“Bollocks,” I grumble, looking around… cars, cars, trucks… _cab._ _“TAXI!”_ I shout, waving frantically as the car achingly turns away from the skyway and lands on the pavement, its door sliding open leisurely as we pile inwards. “Police! Follow that bus!”

The taxi shuts, and shoots forward, drive core squealing.

“Liara, this is Miranda,” Lawson says, “we’re in a taxi, he’s on bus vehicle number 5549612 heading clockwise.”

_“Copy that, we’ve commandeered a vehicle. Just like old times, Kaidan?”_

“Yeah,” Alenko breathes, unable to summon the breath to say anything else.

“Why couldn’t you just charge it?” I ask him.

“My implant isn’t optimised to charge a varren, let alone a bus.” Kaidan breathes in deeply before continuing. “I can do it, but it’s very messy. If I’d charged that bus all I’d have done is fallen through the skyway and out into space.”

“But you _can_ do it?”

“I’ve done it in the past. Once or twice.” He takes another breath, and swallows. “It hurts.”

“So you’d have fallen to your death, and got a headache. I see.” Foolish idea. I should’ve kept my mouth shut, saved my breath for chasing the fugitive.

“The bus is stopping,” Miranda announces, and the taxi slows to keep its distance as the bus swerves back beside the sidewalk, coming to a halt at a waiting passenger as we open the taxi’s doors and jump from it. “Natasha, you cover the rear doors, Kaidan, come with me, we’ll go from the front.”

I can see him. I can see the face, I can see his glowing blue eyes darting around, sweat forming on his forehead, and he makes a run for it.

Pistol. Where’s my sodding _pistol?_ Dammit. Have to do it the old fashioned way—and I hear him _grunt_ and struggle as I run my shoulders into his waist and rugby-tackle him to the ground.

“You’re under arrest!” I shout, fully aware that I speak with the authority of a bagel—or was it a croissant?—but for god’s sake, I’ve _got him._

Except there’s something wrong. The face seems soft, undeveloped, his eyes are just regular blue, they aren’t glowing, and… he’s _bleeding._

I hear footsteps, two pairs, and Tali, and Liara, and I signal with one hand to Lawson and Kaidan that I’ve got him. “He’s here,” I shout, pressing down harder on his shoulder with my other hand as he writhes under my grip.

Underdeveloped. The Illusive Man in the vids, in the security footage from the hotel, looked like he was at least eighty, well into middle age. This man looks no older than twenty.

A lookalike? No.

“Who are you?” I demand.

He coughs, and wheezes, and I can see blood on his mouth. “I don’t… who… I don’t understand…”

I loosen my grip a little. He doesn’t struggle, and his face—I can tell he’s terrified. His data streams show nothing but fear, horror. No backstory, nothing, and I gently lift up the hem of his shirt.

No navel. His belly is completely flat, no scar marking the umbilical cord.

A clone. Seriously? But it’s the only logical conclusion. This is— _he_ is—a botched clone job.

“He’s a clone,” I say, releasing my grip and standing up.

“A _clone_?” Tali’Zorah peers at his face, sees the blood in his mouth and the nosebleed. “Keelah, he’s dying!”

“I’ve got medi-gel!” Miranda says, kneeling at the clone’s side and scanning him for injuries. “I’ve called an ambulance.”

I take a look back over the data I gathered from his data streams. “Christ,” I whisper, sending a copy to Tali and to Liara—and to Kaidan.

The clone is an empty shell. No memories, only a very basic command of the English language, a few phrases, and knowledge of how to plant explosives and use the cloaking device hidden in his pocket. And one order.

_Get Alenko._

*

“I’ll never work at NC-Sec again,” I say, pacing up and down Aria’s office.

“You say that as if it matters.”

“It _does_.” I turn to her, as she glares with a scowl of disinterest at the tablet in her hands. “Three people are _dead,_ and I killed two of them.”

“A bounty hunter and a clone of a madman,” Aria retorts, “and the clone was dying anyway. And look on the plus side, you got DNA.”

“Yeah. And on the minus side, I just acted as a vigilante in a region where I have _no_ judicial rights at all. I have my mother under armed guard on Earth, I’m probably going to lose my job, and your police force probably wants my head on a plate—”

“Listen,” she interrupts. “There’s one rule on this station. ‘Don’t fuck with Aria.’”

“So that makes it alright?”

“No.” She stands, and straightens her jacket around her figure. “But I trust you, and I know you acted in good faith.”

I’m not sure how to answer that, and I feel the anger that was flushing my face red turn into embarrassment. “Why? Why do you trust me?”

“Inferred trust. Alenko trusts you, Liara seems to like you.” She turns to the window, gazing out over the nebula again.

“And… why? Why do you trust them?”

“They were with Shepard. And I owe Shepard a debt, even now,” she says, her voice lowering. “Shepard re-took this station for me. And now look at it.”

She breathes before speaking again. “Maybe I’m just getting soft in my old age. Or maybe it’s the singularity.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I mumble.

“It changed people, Loftus.” She sits down on her couch again, and reaches for a glass of honey mead. “At first, we all thought they were being turned into Reapers, or that we’d lose free will, or lose all our differences. But now… I look back and I think of how naïve I was. How unprincipled. And I think of what a pisshole this place was, and how I’d sit by in _Afterlife_ surrounded by mercs and watching hanar jugglers.”

Jellyfish jugglers. Sounds like a laugh. “Sounds like you had an epiphany,” I muse.

“Probably.” She takes another sip of her honey mead. “All down to that man.”

“So…” I mumble, my mouth opening and closing like a goldfish for a few seconds, “you’re not going to space me, or anything?”

“Why would I?” Aria snaps. “You haven’t tried to cross me.”

She pauses for a moment, glaring daggers into empty space before continuing. When she speaks again, there’s a softer edge to her voice that I haven’t heard before.

“I had a daughter,” Aria says. “Liselle. She was sleeping with a merc and Cerberus murdered her.”

_Shit._ “I’m sorry,” I burst, a gut reaction that I spit out while I wait for the horror of what she’s describing to sink in.

“She was sleeping with an ex-Cerberus operative, he was on the run from them… and an assassin broke into their apartment, took him alive and slit her throat. And then they framed _him_.”

“God,” I whisper, “that’s sick. I can’t imagine…”

“No need to,” Aria interrupts. “It gets even worse.”

Even worse? I’ve seen some pretty horrible people in my time at NC-Sec, but it’s hard to imagine how this story could become _more_ horrible.

“They took him alive, and then ran experiments on him. Implanted Reaper nanites into him. Turned him into a Husk, essentially. A super-Husk.”

“Christ.” I’m not sure what to say. I’ve read the horror stories about Cerberus—the Sanctuary concentration camp, the assassinations, the murders—but hearing a first-hand account makes it all the more vivid.

“Copycat or not, Cerberus is still squarely at the very top of my shit list,” Aria continues. “And once you’re on Aria’s shit list, there’s one way you’re getting off.”

I don’t have to ask. “What happened to the guy who killed her?” I ask.

“He died. Shepard killed him,” Aria says, sitting up straight. The slicing anger has returned to her voice, and it’s clear she derives some pleasure from the idea. “Something else I owe that man.”

I look around the office. Just the bodyguard in the corner.

“Can we talk? In confidence?” I ask.

She nods at the bodyguard, and he retreats down the stairwell, locking the door. “Have some honey mead if you want,” she offers.

“No, thanks.” I ball up some spit, and explain as best I can, feeling an unpleasant feeling rising in my stomach. “Do you know why Cerberus went after Kaidan in the first place?”

“Can’t say I do,” she says. “Enlighten me?”

“He was working on creating a clone of Commander Shepard. Using the echo of the Crucible blast wave.”

She puckers her lips for a moment, processing this information, then nodding.

“He’d never managed to get one with a functioning brain… but anyway, there was a component. Salvaged from the Crucible, called an atomic actualiser. Extremely expensive to produce, virtually impossible without vast amounts of eezo, and it’s the only one left. That’s what the Illusive Man is after.”

“I see.” Aria sits up straight, setting her glass back down. “Thank you for telling me.”

“You’re welcome,” I say. “Just don’t go around telling anyone.”

“I won’t betray your confidence.” She pauses for a moment, her brow furrowed in thought. “If they’re seeking those components, would that imply to you that they’re building a Crucible?”

I hadn’t thought of that. “Building a Crucible? What for?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’ll pass that on to Liara, though. Tali could probably tell you more.”

“Right.” Building a Crucible? Why? What use would Cerberus have for another Crucible?

The others return from the Rannoch Embassy around five minutes later, with a dump of the geth platform’s memory cores. “It’ll probably be recycled before too long,” Tali’Zorah says. “Poor thing.”

“Aria and I were just discussing something,” I say. “Kaidan, given that they’re after your atomic actualiser, do you think Cerberus could be building a Crucible?”

He pauses for a moment. “I… uh, I hadn’t considered that.”

“What would they use a Crucible for?” Liara asks.

“I could run some simulations once we get back to Carpathia,” Tali chimes, “but I was under the impression that the Crucible was simply a general-purpose transmitter with a synthesiser attached to it.”

“The Crucible was a big thing,” Miranda says, “there’s no way the Illusive Man could afford those components. He’s run out of mercs and he’s down to cloning himself, cheaply.”

“And what about if he salvaged them? Or miniaturised the device,” I suggest, “and then amplified the signal?”

“Possibly. It’s difficult to tell.” Lawson sits down on Aria’s couch. “That said, we do now have a DNA sample. And we can probably work out where his base is if we look at the transport records.”

Progress. Some progress, at least.

“We’d better be heading back to Carpathia,” Liara says. “When we find this place, we’ll have to move quickly.”

I hope she’s not talking about me. I’ve had enough action to last a lifetime on this damn station.

“Well, you already know it’s an illegal cloning facility,” Lawson suggests. “He’s cloning himself and using his clones to plant bombs. That’s enough for him to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

“You know what the Council’s like,” Liara reminds her. “Steadfastly refusing to believe that anything’s wrong.”

“I see. I’ll keep in touch,” Miranda says, standing and shaking our hands in turn. “It’s been nice seeing you all again.”

“Likewise,” Aria smiles. “I’m not one for big, happy reunions, but I appreciate what you’ve done.”

“You’re welcome.” Liara leads the way out of the office. “So long, Aria.”

*

“It’s good to see Miranda wearing something other than a catsuit,” Tali mutters on the shuttle ride home.

“Catsuit?”

“She always used to go out in a catsuit in combat and turn her kinetic barrier up to full,” she explains. “I’ve no idea why. Maybe she thought she’d charm the Collectors into hypnosis with her backside.”

“Good trick if you can do it.” I peer to my side, where Kaidan’s hunched in one of the benches, cradling a pile of boxed omni-tool components. He’s going to try a repair on that thing. He’s daring, I’ll give him that.

“She’s definitely mellowed,” Tali says.

“Yes, she has,” Liara agrees, “and Aria has done wonders for Omega.”

“It reminds me of the Citadel,” Kaidan says. “The _old_ Citadel. In a good way.”

“Never got the chance,” I mumble. “At least we got the DNA sample.”

“And he’s cloning himself. That’s just sick,” Tali suggests. “And as for the Crucible… whatever he’s planning, it must be something big.”

Something big, and something scary.


	6. Doomsday Machine

It’s coming up to mid-afternoon on Carpathia, and it’s still raining.

I pull the raincoat around myself, the shiver in my legs making me regret going out for a walk. The beginnings of Rivendell’s town are here: the roads and the streets have been marked out, and a few have been paved over. Only a few buildings, though, and they’re all pre-fabricated. The rest is mud and gravel, a large rectangle at the top of a hill, exposed to the brunt of the rain and the wind.

I’m freezing.

A gust of wind buffets me in the face, and I find cover behind one of the prefab buildings, listening for the subsidence of the whistling.

That’s when I hear the voice. Crackly, quiet, coming out of an omni-tool speaker.

_“…there’s things I want—things I wanted to say when I won this war, but I never got the chance…”_

I sidle around, find the door, and peer inwards. The hologram vanishes, and Alenko quickly turns around in his chair.

Soldering iron, tweezers, screwdriver, a few open boxes. His omni-tool is in pieces on the workbench, hooked up to a computer tablet.

“Detective. Can I help you?”

“Uhm… no, it’s fine.” I feel like I’m intruding on something. “Have you seen Joker anywhere?”

“He went back to the house.”

“Do you need any help?” I ask, stepping inside and examining the workbench. Chips, memory modules, processor modules, omni-gel converters, projector boards, radio modules.

“Thanks, but… I’m fine,” Alenko says. “I’m just in the process of transferring all my files across.”

_All his files._ The tablet’s listing them as they go, and I do a quick search and swipe one discreetly. “OK. I’ll be back at the house. Be careful with the pinout of that HK-45, those chips can be fiddly,” I remind him, even though he doesn’t need to be reminded.

He was clearly watching a video, and unless it was the most tasteless porn flick of all time, that was Commander Shepard’s voice. I wonder _why_ I copied that file from his omni-tool as I wander back up to the house, coat dripping with rainwater. Too nosey.

I sneak back to the guest room, and find one of the bars of chocolate I was keeping for emergencies. I only had lunch (synth-chicken and lettuce sandwich prepared by EDDI) an hour or so ago, but I’m suddenly feeling guilty, and anxious, and curious.

And as I munch down on the chocolate bar, I begin playback.

It’s Commander Shepard, in something I recognise as the back of a Kodiak shuttle, military-specced with metallic walls. He looks freshly showered, and his face is exactly like it is in all the news vids and the pictures, locked in a stern expression, his eyes glimmering an ocean-coloured blue.

And then he opens his mouth, and the voice I hear is strange. It’s clearly his, clearly Shepard’s voice, but it comes out oddly, peculiarly quiet, with less resonance than his recorded speeches. “Hey, Kaidan,” he says, his face bobbing around a little, as if he’s looking around for someone else… or afraid of making eye contact. “It’s September twenty-ninth, and we’re around three days from Horizon. I’m recording this now because it feels like the end run is getting closer, and I don’t want to end this war without having done this.”

I have a suspicion about what this is, and… _god, Natasha, what are you doing? This is unfair, you’re intruding on someone’s privacy. He was the only person who was ever supposed to see this._

In spite of this, or perhaps to spite myself, I continue watching as Shepard draws in a deep breath, visibly bracing himself for the words he’s about to say. And when they do come out, there’s a little wobble, the most minuscule of wavers in the pitch on the beginning.

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to wing it.” The recorder picks up another suck of breath before the next sentence. “If you’re watching this, then I’m dead, or about to die very soon,” he says, as I watch his cheeks flush a little pinker, and the tiniest glimmer of sweat appearing on his forehead, “and there’s no chance at all that I’m going to survive.”

It is. It’s exactly what I expected, and every shred of common decency my mum and dad drilled into me as a kid tells me to stop watching now, but my curiosity is too insidious a thing to resist.

“I’m recording this vid in case I don’t get the chance to say goodbye. Because there’s things I want—things I wanted to say when I won this war, but I never got the chance to.”

I think I know what they’re going to be. _I’m sorry. I love you. Find someone else. I love you. Have a good life. I love you. If there’s an afterlife I’m waiting for you. I love you. I love you._

“For a start, I love you,” Shepard says. Well, I was right. God, this is sad. “Having you by my side has given me something worth fighting for, something worth living for… and I’m sorry I didn’t manage to live a little longer for you, because you’re probably the single most wonderful person I’ve ever known.” He’s sincere, he means every word of it—I can hear the _cracks_ in his voice, see the twitching of his eyes, the flaring of his nostrils, the quivers of his lips. God…

“…remember me, but don’t kill yourself with it. I love you, and I want you to be happy. There’ll be someone else out there, somewhere, someone who’s better than I was. Someone who’ll be there for you until the end.” So far, so predictable, so sad. What the hell am I _doing_? Why am I even watching this?

“…I suppose I’m agnostic, myself… but if this isn’t the end for me, then I’ll be looking out for you… and waiting for you at the bar.” The bar at the end of the universe. This feels like something from a trashy novel set during the war— _any_ war—with a beautiful girl (or boy) and a handsome soldier, and a tragic ending. But this is _real_. It’s palpably real.

I might well be the only person besides Kaidan to ever set eyes on this vid. The only person besides him to see through the masquerade, see the raw emotion being projected at some hypothetical event—an event that came to pass only a few weeks later.

“No matter what happens, Kaidan, have a good life,” Shepard continues, trying to smile, but it comes out more like an aborted sob, and the sudden voluptuous depth of his voice adds to the effect. “And remember that I love you, always.”

I take another bite of my chocolate bar, and wipe away a tear from my left eye with my free palm as the picture fades to black. I’ve intruded on someone’s privacy, hacked their computer, watched a video with Commander Shepard pouring his heart out, and now I’m sitting here snacking.

I feel awful.

*

Liara is just finishing up a video conversation as I enter—a sandy blonde woman with severe features, a round face, pale eyes.

“Natasha,” she says, turning as she hangs up, “something you need?”

“Who was that?” I ask, not sure what I’m here for. Update, maybe?

“Kahlee Sanders.” An admiral high up in the Alliance brass. “I was just discussing the identity of the Illusive Man.”

“You think he’s ex-Alliance?”

“I _know_ he’s ex-Alliance. I’ve got a name,” Liara says, bringing up her notes on the vid screen. “Nathan Joss Migro. He lived on Elysium, and he joined Cerberus a few months before the end of the War.”

His Cerberus file photo looks not too dissimilar to his present appearance—but he’s younger, and, of course, plain-skinned, with no data streams, no glimmer of green in his eyes, just pale blue.

“So why were you talking to the Alliance?”

“I called Kahlee on a hunch,” Liara explains, “and his DNA is present in the Alliance database, but the record’s orphaned. The data tying it to a name and a service ID isn’t present.”

That’s odd. That couldn’t happen accidentally, and there’s no way something sanity-checked, modelled, tested, rewritten, tested again, stress-tested and edge-tested for use in the Alliance could fail like that—it would take decades to hack an Alliance coffee machine, let alone a personnel database.

“So someone deleted it,” I suggest.

“Precisely. With this in mind,” Liara says, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Nathan Migro turned out to be an alias.”

“Nothing else?”

“Actually, there is something.” Liara brings up a galaxy map on the holo-table, bringing up a few highlights, all in and around the Eagle Nebula. “I checked Migro’s transaction history. These are all the locations of the supply drops.”

Someone who is of no fixed planetary abode (or doesn’t want it revealed) can order deliveries of equipment and supplies to be received by space drop. It’s a favoured tactic of pirates, in fact: the goods are loaded into a barge, hauled into a discreet orbit in some backwater system, and the tug boat detaches and speeds off at FTL speeds. The receiving party then gets their own tug boat, attaches it to the barge, and hauls it the last ten light years or so to its destination.

“He’s careful,” I mutter, “I’ll give him that.”

“I might be able to track it down further,” Liara says. “I just need to be able to find one of the receiving tug boats.”

I examine each of the green splodges on the map. Oxygen, fuel, eezo, food, alcohol. Nothing like enough to run a cloning operation, let alone build a Crucible.

“What about anonymised orders?” I ask.

“Far too many.” She settles into her seat. “Piracy is too common in that part of space to triangulate a single point for space drops.”

That’s a problem I’ve run into far too many times. “So our only option is to watch and wait?”

“Yes.”

Migro’s next supply drop could be in two hours, or two weeks—or two years. He may already have a finished Crucible, waiting only on the little metallic box in Alenko’s hoodie.

“Suppose he had a Crucible,” I ask, “and supposing he were to fire it… what could he do with it?”

“Overload the mass relays,” she suggests. “Destroy them. Rewrite the DNA of everything in the galaxy… or destroy it.”

Destroy all life in the galaxy. It sounds like something from a bad science fiction movie, or some art house video game. But it’s possible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, the old saying goes.

The Reaper War only ended twenty years ago. Twenty years. I’ve always been aware that my life, and everything I know and love, is more fragile than I’d like to think. But I’ve ignored it. Until now.

“Any news?”

The door slides shut behind Tali’Zorah as she enters, peering at the galaxy map.

“We know he’s in the Eagle Nebula. No more specific than that,” Liara says.

_“You may also wish to advise Detective Loftus and Tali’Zorah of Migro’s work at Cerberus, Doctor,”_ the drone chimes, bobbing up from behind the central console.

“Yes, thank you, Glyph,” Liara says, picking up a tablet from the table and handing it to Tali’Zorah. “This is what Migro was working on at Cerberus.”

I download a copy for myself. _The Logopolis cell._ A project investigating the effects of dark energy on stars, on gravity, on the speed of the expansion of the Universe. Entropy, decay, Heat Death.

The science behind the ultimate fate of the Universe is simple. The Universe tends towards disorder, towards chaos, towards a mushy cloud of evaporating photons—it’s called the Heat Death scenario. Many scientists believe that dark energy is what perpetuates this, that it increases the probability for matter to become unbound and the tendency for distant bodies to degenerate into particle soup.

Then there’s the unavoidable fact that mass effect technology _relies_ on dark energy. Zero-mass corridors, the QEC in my nervous system, the eezo in biotics and in the mass effect cores of relays and ships and power stations—everything produces enormous amount of dark energy, and it’s unavoidable.

“I see,” Tali says. “I’m not surprised Cerberus were interested in it, I was studying something similar with a research party on Haestrom.”

Haestrom, satellite of Dholen in the Far Rim. It actually went nova four years ago, erupting into an angry supergiant fourteen times its original volume, consuming Haestrom in the process. Scientists are still arguing as to what caused it.

“He was studying the end of the universe,” I muse, “but then why’s he building… why’s he building a Crucible? Something that could destroy the galaxy?”

“It couldn’t destroy the galaxy,” Tali corrects me. “Only all synthetic life.”

“Yes, but _everyone_ is partly synthetic.”

“Exactly. Transpeople will be hardest hit, and as for the geth…” She trails off, and drops her head, her nose hardening in thought. “He _does_ need to be stopped.”

“Yeah,” I say, “but the Citadel isn’t going to do anything. They’d show more concern over someone drawing a moustache on the Grissom statue outside the Tower.”

Liara stares for a few seconds, blank, as if she didn’t understand the joke. Shame. That was one of my better ones.

“We may have to do it ourselves.” Her suggestion is one I’ve been expecting, but have been hoping she’d avoid. Or, at least, try not to rope me into.

“I won’t ask you to come, Natasha,” she continues, and I breathe a sigh of relief, “you’ve helped us a lot already.”

“I’m in,” Tali announces, before I can reply with a ‘thank you.’ “And I’m sure Garrus will, too. Joker or Steve might even fly us there.”

*

I find Kaidan in the basement, with the goateed man whose name I still don’t know. Alenko is sitting in a chair, staring at a wall, clenching and unclenching his fist repeatedly.

It takes me a moment to work out what he’s doing, but the gentle radio noise and the quiet _wub-ssch-wub_ sound gives it away. As he closes his fist, it glimmers blue, and a spark pops out of thin air in the corner of the room—sparking, warping, collapsing into a miniature black hole. As he relaxes again, the singularity vanishes, puffing into a cloud of nothingness with a sound like a constipated toilet.

“You’re going to have to eat soon,” Goatee says. “That must take a lot of energy.”

“I’m _fine,_ Steve,” Alenko says. _Steve. That’s the goatee guy’s name._ He looks up, and his face switches to a contentedly neutral expression instantaneously. “Natasha, need me for something?”

“We’ve got a name, and a rough location. He’s somewhere in the Eagle Nebula,” I tell him. “Liara’s trying to narrow it down.”

“I see.” He stands up, mopping sweat from his brow with his forearm and tugging at the fabric of his shirt. “And you said they had a name?”

“Nathan Migro. Turns out he was ex-Alliance, and that’s probably just an alias.” I pass him the tablet Liara lent me. “Is your omni-tool working?”

“Yeah,” he says, “no thanks to you.”

“I’m sorry,” I blurt, automatically.

“Don’t worry,” he smiles. “You saved my life, it’s just a computer. It can be replaced.”

His eyes stare straight through me for a moment, as if he’s had a momentary lapse of thought, before he comes to himself and scans the document I’ve just given him. “Looks like we could be waiting for a while,” he says.

“Well, we don’t even know if he’s using space-drops. We _could_ be waiting forever,” I remind him.

“Yeah, that’s… that’s a problem.” He downloads a copy to his omni-tool and hands the tablet back to me.

“We’ve checked his transaction history, too,” I add, “we were right. Element zero, palladium, refined platinum, high-powered capacitors, hydrogen…”

He takes a second or so to digest this information. “So he _is_ building a Crucible?”

“It seems so,” I tell him. He picks his hoodie off the back of the chair again, briefly feeling at the inside pocket before shrugging it back on.

“Says something, doesn’t it?” Goatee—no, _Steve_ —says. “Twenty years ago it took galactic unity and trillions of credits. Now there’s a crazy man building one in his backyard.”

“Explains why he can’t afford to hire any more mercs,” I suggest, “and I’ll bet he’s living off instant noodles and filtered piss, too.”

“And his clones,” Kaidan reminds me.

“Yeah.” Steve has his hand out, and I offer him the tablet, which he briefly examines, paging through the document, skim-reading before downloading his own copy, too.

“What about the amplifier?” he asks.

“The what?” Kaidan wonders, but I realise it immediately. _Yes._ I could bloody kiss Steve.

“Of _course!_ ” I grin. “With the amount of materials he’s shipping in, it’s going to be heavily miniaturised… so he’s going to need a _huge_ amplifier, or a transmitter…”

“Something you could detect optically,” Steve beams. “It’d show up on a monitoring scope image.”

That’s smart. Stupidly obvious, but smart. The original Crucible was the size of the old Citadel—the new one, judging by the materials being brought in, and the fact Migro only wants one atomic actualiser, can’t be much bigger than a bus. So it’s going to have to be attached to a _massive_ transmitter.

“You’re a genius, Steve,” I say, sending the info to Liara using my omni-hook. “Dammit, why didn’t we think of that before?”

“I’ll go talk to Liara,” he says, and I detect a little green flush in his data streams and the tiniest tint of red on his skin. Damn. People always get creeped out whenever I compliment them.

Kaidan lights up his omni-tool again as Steve vanishes up the stairs, and I notice that he’s running a simulation of some kind. It takes me a little while to recognise the circuit diagram—the Crucible.

But there’s something wrong about it.

“Why are you running the Crucible with a reversed polarity?” I ask.

“Experimenting,” he says, flatly.

“With what?”

He looks up at me for a second, his lips pressed together in firm determination, and highlights one of the components. “It’s labelled ‘Citadel,’ but ignore that, that could be any radio transceiver.”

I begin to understand now. The Crucible turns matter into energy, and broadcasts it; what Alenko is simulating is reversing its operation, receiving a broadcast of an energy signature and turning it into matter. An atomic actualiser can turn matter into an energy signature—or energy into matter.

“You think you can use it to bring Shepard back,” I say, putting two and two together.

He looks embarrassed for a moment, then resigns himself. “Yeah,” he confesses.

I gulp for a moment, unsure of what to say. I consider his idea for a moment. Using the echo of a man to bring him back from the dead is patently absurd, no doubt about it, but stranger things have happened. It was only two decades ago that the entire galaxy’s DNA was re-tooled. Two decades ago that the mutilated Husks became benign, and began having memories of who they were before the Reapers.

“It’s been twenty years,” I remind him.

“Yeah.”

I can’t argue with him on the principles: the idea is principally rock-solid, even though it’s completely crazy. “It’s not going to be the same, then,” I tell him. “You’ve got older, and he… he’s going to be exactly the same as he was when he died.”

“He’s _not_ dead,” Kaidan insists. “Not really.”

I _can_ argue with him on this, on semantics, but I’m not going to. “I know, but he’s… it’s not like you can just magic people back to life.”

“I don’t have to.” He sits down in the chair, zipping the hoodie up around his figure and rubbing the beard at his chin with his thumb. “I mean, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. Do you know about Steve?”

“What about him?” Up until five minutes ago I didn’t even know his name.

“He and Robert were… married, before the War. And Robert got abducted by the Collectors, he was killed on Ferris Fields… and a year later he woke up as a Husk in central London and he… he ran into Steve on a bus.”

Extraordinary good luck. There are former Reaper victims around today who still know nothing of their former identity, still don’t have a concrete name, still don’t know what happened to the people they loved.

“And I think… well, that was just coincidence.” Kaidan pauses, gazing at the wall, leaning forward on his elbows, trying to rephrase what he was going to say. “And if that can happen by chance, why not?”

_Why not?_ I’m having trouble coming up with reasons. It _should_ work. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t.

“He’s going to wake up and realise he’s been dead for twenty years,” I say.

“Not the first time,” he reminds me.

“Twenty years is a _long_ time. The world’s changed, it’s moved on…”

“I— I know,” he says, interrupting me quietly, but with a strength I haven’t heard in his voice before, except in the vids. “But it’s better.”

It’s hard to argue against the fact that, on the whole, the singularity has been a good thing. Political peace and unity, rebuilt worlds and space stations and starships and infrastructure, and synthetic life counting as truly “alive.” No Reapers trying to harvest you. The largest pro-human terrorist organisation reduced to a single madman building a doomsday machine in deep space.

“I said…” Kaidan begins again, breathing in deeply, “I said I’d be there at the end for Shepard. Be there to hold him again. And I suppose… he deserves better. I just want to let him have a normal death. I want him to know just how much I love him.”

His lip’s twitching, and I can see a glint in his eye before he blinks it away, clears his throat and sits upright.

“I see,” I mutter.

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” he asks, his lips curling into the tiniest of smiles.

_Why not?_

“Yeah,” I say, “I suppose it is.”

*

“Jarrahe Station,” Liara announces, bringing up a telescope image on the holo-table. “It’s an ex-salarian station in the Strabo system. Around thirteen months BBE, its on-board VI went rampant and starved everyone aboard.”

“I was there,” Tali adds. “Shepard shut it down when we were passing through the system.”

Garrus, Steve, Robert and Joker are leaning against the console, peering intently at the hovering representation of the station as Liara brings up some annotations. “It was bought by an anonymous party in 4 PBE and made habitable. This is what the station looked like then,” Liara continues, “and _this_ is what it looks like now.”

The broken cylindrical body of the station now occupies a tiny blob, a simple pinprick on the convex side of a tremendous parabolic dish—a high gain antenna, of some kind, gargantuan in every respect, at least five thousand kilometres in radius. And it’s pointed precisely at the nearest mass relay.

“So, Migro is building a Crucible,” Vakarian says, “and he’s got a massive dish to fire it with. The barrel of the gun.”

“He _has built_ ,” Tali corrects him. “Presumably he’s just waiting on Kaidan’s atomic actualiser.”

I look over to Kaidan, who’s standing in the corner, examining the simulation on his omni-tool. Clean-shaven, too, I note, and his hair seems thicker—he’s combed it properly, so he’s looking a lot less gaunt and withered. “Yeah,” he says, looking up. “I mean, after building that dish, he couldn’t afford to build his own actualiser.”

“And we’re going to deliver one right to him.” Garrus loosens his mandibles—the turian equivalent of a smile. “Sounds like a plan.”

“I wonder if that’s his plan,” I muse. “The whole thing could be a trap.”

“That’s pretty obvious,” Liara says. “We’ll just have to be quick, and destroy it afterwards.”

“And how are we going to do that, exactly?” I demand. “You can’t just waltz into a space station, plant a few charges and bug out.”

“Natasha,” Garrus says, leaning forward a little, “there are some advantages to having the Primarch on your side.”

Seriously? “What, are you going to send in a whole _fleet?_ ”

“No, no. I’ve just… ah, _borrowed_ a few turian fighter squadrons. Aria’s sending some of her ships, too.”

“I have ships, as well,” Liara interjects. “Firepower shouldn’t be an issue.”

I keep forgetting most of the people around me have private armies. I’m on first-name terms with all of them, even though I’ve only known them for a few days. _God._

“On the other hand,” Liara continues, “we don’t want to end up destroying the Crucible before we’ve used it. We’re going to need to board the station on a small shuttle.”

“All well and good until he looks out of the window,” Steve grumbles.

I peer at the command centre of the station again, the cylindrical base. Freshly-installed anti-ship batteries. “If he has any sense, any unexpected shuttle’s going to get roasted,” I say.

“Not if it’s carrying me,” Kaidan says, picking the component from his pocket again and holding it aloft. “He’s after this, remember.”

Using _himself_ to guarantee the shuttle’s safety. “That’s nuts,” I tell him.

“Migro’s _not_ going to destroy this if he knows he can get it and _then_ kill me,” Alenko insists. “It’s the only way.”

“I agree with Natasha,” Joker interrupts, “trying to go in there undetected is asking to be shot down. Luckily for you, I have an alternative.”

The _Normandy_ , Shepard’s ship, had its space-running components sold off before it was put in the museum at the Citadel. Moreau had purchased the old heatsinks, and had worked on creating a prototype stealth shuttle based on an old Kodiak with an improved drive core. “We managed to get it working, but we never took it into mass production,” he says. “ _But_ the prototype should still be spaceworthy.”

“In that case,” Liara suggests, “that would be the better option. As long as you can get it spaceworthy within twenty-four hours, that’ll be how we get there.”

She brings up the plan of attack—after they board, they divide into two fire teams. One falls back to activate the Crucible, the other goes up ahead to take out the command centre and find Migro. When the signal is given, Aria’s, Liara’s and Garrus’s consortium jump to surround the station, and take out the dish, leaving the team time to escape.

As far as plans go, it’s perfectly solid. A quiet strike on the point of the station, a surprise attack, in, quick, and out. As an extraction mission, it’s unconventional—I doubt anyone has ever had to resurrect their target from the dead before.

“You really think this is going to work, don’t you?” I ask Liara, once everyone’s dispersed back to their business in preparation for tomorrow’s attack.

“There’s no reason why it shouldn’t,” she says, smiling. “And if he—if it does work, it’ll be worth it.”

Time to say it, before I chicken out. I take a deep breath, and say, “I’m coming with you.”

“You’re coming with us?” she asks. “Don’t feel like you have to—”

“I _want_ to,” I tell her. “I’m sure. I feel like I want to see this through to the end.”

She smiles, and shakes my hand. “Good to have you on-side, Detective Loftus.”


	7. Veni, Vidi, Vici!

The shuttle rattles into the docking port. With any luck, that’ll be the first whisper Migro has of our arrival.

_God, what am I doing?_ I’m saddled down with body armour, sweating profusely, in a shuttle that’s probably overloaded and with an engine on its last legs. About to break into an enemy base.

Tali sets to work at the door, cutting it open with a welding tool as Garrus stands from his seat. “Barriers up, everybody grab a weapon!” he says, pulling an assault rifle from the locker.

I take a scoped pistol and a shotgun. Liara takes the SMG and a sniper rifle. Garrus adds a grenade launcher to his belt.

“Isn’t that overkill?” I ask him.

“It’s called being prepared,” he says, arming his rifle as Tali finishes with the door. “Everybody ready?”

“Yes,” I whisper, arming the pistol.

“Remember, if we run into any more clones, headshots _only._ Make it painless,” he says, pulling apart the door manually, as the sound of an alarm klaxon blares from inside the station.

Shit. I’m actually doing this, aren’t I?

“Move out,” Garrus says, stepping forward, gun raised. Liara follows him first, and Steve and I bring up the rear. “Left here— _HOLD!_ ” he shouts, pressing his back against the wall and gesturing to me.

Two mechs, an old LOKI model, striding towards us. _Shit._ I squeeze off a few shots at the one on the left as their bullets bounce off my barrier, _ping, ping…_

_Overload._ Tali’s synthetic overload app fires, and the mech on the left explodes in a shower of blue sparks and arcs—which jump to the other one, causing it to lock up and explode too.

“Clear,” I whisper.

“How are your shields?” Garrus asks.

“Seventy—no, _one hundred_ per cent,” I tell him, waving him forward.

“Tali,” he whispers into his comm radio, “the corridor is clear, move up.”

_“We’re on our way,”_ comes the reply, as we press forward. Quickly.

This place smells strange. There’s an odd, cherry-like stench, pungent. _Red sand._

“Can anyone else smell red sand?” I ask, as we enter an atrium and Garrus heads for the second door on the right.

“You’re right,” Liara says.

“Something else we can bust him for, then— _shit!_ ”

A hail of bullets rains from the door Garrus opened, and I quickly dart behind a computer console. Clones!

Liara hurls a singularity at the entrance. I peer over the edge of the console—two, _three_ of them trapped in the singularity, and finish each of them with two shotgun blasts to the head.

But there are more.

_Four_.

And one of them’s glowing blue! I dive back under the console as he hurls a glowing sphere of dark energy at me, which breaks on the console and makes my teeth tingle.

I can taste blood already…

“We’re taking heavy fire!” Garrus shouts into his radio. “Tali, report!”

*

_“We’re en-route to the Crucible hard-point, making good progress!” Tali barks as she turns two of the mechs against the clones and dives behind Robert as he blasts his assault rifle into the corridor._

_Kaidan gets to work on the door, his shields flaring blue as Tali and Robert fall back to defend the door._

_One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. His shields are dropping—twenty per cent, fifteen, ten—_

_“Reloading!” Robert cries, sliding the heatsink out from his rifle and slamming the replacement into position—and exposing Kaidan to direct fire!_

Six, four, two—

_“It’s open!” he shouts, sliding between the leaves of the door mechanism and lighting up his omni-tool again on the other side. “Keep the heat on!”_

_The computer beeps, its display spinning, and…_ yes! _The doors slam shut, and there’s silence—for about a second._

BOOM. BOOM.

_“That door isn’t going to hold forever,” Robert says, reloading his rifle for good measure and picking some proximity mines from his pocket._

_“We’ve got work to do, then,” Tali says, replacing her sniper rifle and picking up her toolkit, surveying the device before her._

_The strong room is large, a former observation deck at a guess, surrounded by machines—wires, funnels, tubes, tanks—all leading to a cylindrical glass tank, filled with some kind of noble gas. Argon, her omni-hook confirms. This must be the discharge point: use argon as a buffer, a kind of capacitor, to build up enormous amounts of energy, and discharge it—overloading and destroying every synthetic in existence._

I can repurpose that, _Tali thinks,_ no trouble. _She activates her comm radio again. “Garrus, we’re here but it looks like the power’s off. I’ll need you to get to Migro’s office and switch it on again.”_

*

“Copy!” Garrus yells, as I unlock the door and slide it open with my free hand. “Move it! Move in!”

This room is an office—there’s a desk, a leather chair, a desk lamp, a computer.

“Check the corners,” Garrus orders, as I slide into the computer chair, slice in and examine the schematics. The cloning facility is fully powered, so is the armoury… I shut those down, close the bulkheads and vent the atmosphere just to be safe.

_Crucible._ I bring up the power for that area, and I hear a whine as a bank of generators starts up below me.

That’s odd—oh, _shit._ The Crucible’s powering up already.

_“What the hell’s going on?”_ Robert demands over the comm, _“the Crucible just lit up like a Christmas tree!”_

“It’s powering up by itself—” I stab at the controls, and the thing still won’t shut down, _dammit,_ what the hell’s going on?

“Confused, Detective?”

That door’s open again. A clone, with a rocket launcher—

_“HEAVY!”_ I scream, sliding under the desk and grabbing my shotgun as a rocket zips over my head and slams into the wall behind me with a tremendous blossom of light.

*

“Tali, listen to me!” _Loftus shouts,_ “Is there anything between the discharge nodes?”

_“There’s a tank filled with argon,” Tali says._

“Destroy it! For god’s sake, do whatever you can to destroy it! The Crucible’s powering up!”

_Bosh’tet! It’s on an automatic control, it activated immediately when she slid that actualiser into place—and now it’s going to discharge that gas through the radio dish, and fry everything this side of Andromeda!_

_“Destroy that tank!” she demands, slamming it with the butt of her shotgun as the gas inside begins to glow bright red._

Slam. Shoot. _Kaidan unloads a clip into the tank, and Robert throws a proximity charge at it—and with a_ boom _the glass shatters._

_“Get back!” Kaidan shouts, “it’s going to blow!”_

_The light flares crimson, and the tank explodes with an ear-shattering_ crack _—and a spherical barrier blossoms from Kaidan’s hands as the clones burst through the door._

_“All done, but it’s going to take about two minutes to bring it back online,” Tali blusters down her radio as bullets crash into Kaidan’s barrier, his eyes glowing bright blue. “Come in! Keelah…”_

*

“I’m hit!” Garrus gasps, as Liara knocks the rocket launcher from the clone’s arms with a biotic _punch_ , and I take the chance and send a thousand volts into his kinetic barrier.

He dives under the table, producing a shotgun from his back, and shooting precisely between my feet. _Fuck!_ That was a miss, but—

Onto the table, over, and a kick to his face—damn, his shields have regenerated, and I’m too weak and I’m too fat for this—

And that’s when he flips the table _up_ , and I go careering backwards. The wind is thumped from my lungs and the back of my head crashes into the wall—

*

_“Thirty seconds,” Tali announces, “Garrus, talk to me!”_

“Get here soon!” _Garrus grunts, and Tali’s blood runs cold._

_The Crucible is active, a green glow now forming in the cloud of gas between the two termini, arcing, sparking, whistling—_

_“I can’t hold on much longer!” Kaidan gasps, sweat beading on his forehead, as his barrier’s intensity flares, falters, the odd bullet __pinging _past—__

_“Detonate! Detonate!” Tali shouts, as the sparking and the glows begin to coalesce, to form into a shadow—long, black— “Now!”_

_Kaidan sucks in a deep breath, and lets out an almighty_ roar _as he hurls his arms forward—the barrier_ explodes _in a splash of blue light, and she looks back to the Crucible—_

_And there’s a green flash,_

_and a_ crack,

_and a_ scream—

_and a_ thud _as something soft clatters to the ground, and draws in a gasp of breath._

*

The face smears into resolution, its lines, its pointy features and its silvery hair. No, _no,_ this isn’t a clone.

This is Nathan Joss Migro, the pretender to the position of Illusive Man, and I grasp my pistol from my holster and aim it at his forehead, releasing the safety. _Dammit._ Clip overheated, and it’ll be at least ten minutes before it cools down.

“It’s too late,” he says, “you can’t stop it.”

“We just did,” I spit.

“Me? No, not me,” Migro says, his face twisted into a surly expression of frustration. “Although you’ve got _him_ back now. Get off this station quick and I might just let you live.”

“If you activate the Crucible, _none of us_ will live!” Liara snaps from behind the overturned table she’s using as cover—where I can hear the smear of medi-gel, and heavy turian breathing, and human breathing. Garrus must be behind there too, and I think Steve got hit as well.

“You’ll be fine, Dr. T’Soni.” Migro leans back in his chair. “As for you, Detective Loftus… some lifelong disabilities. That’s acceptable.”

“What the _hell_ are you talking about?” I demand. “Me being maimed is _not_ acceptable!”

“In the great scheme of things, it’s…” Migro pauses, takes a long look at me, and his expression softens a little. “I’m sorry.”

*

_“Shepard!_ Shepard!”

_Shepard can barely hear the voice as he throws up again, violently emptying the contents of his digestive system on to the floor—where the_ hell _is he?_

“Shepard!” _He recognises the voice now. “It’s me! It’s Kaidan!”_

_But where is he? What the hell is this place? Where’s Anderson? Where’s the Catalyst—_

_“Look at me,” he hears, as he feels two rough, calloused hands on each of his cheeks, and something soft on his forehead._

Kaidan.

_“I’m here,” Kaidan whispers, his face—_ that face _, the beautiful face that he’s become enchanted by over the last seven weeks, resolving into a smile, sheened with sweat and with a glimmer of green in his eyes. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”_

_Kaidan leans forward and kisses him again, and he begins to hear things. Kaidan’s breathing, the crackling of equipment behind him—and his_ face. _He’s become skinnier, more gaunt, his hair’s thinned, greyed—_

_“What happened?” Shepard manages between two guttural coughs._

_“It’s a long story,” Kaidan smiles, and Shepard can see tears in his eyes, and can feel tears in his own. God knows how he got here, but…_

_…and there’s Tali. Shouting into a comm radio—and she’s not wearing her mask, and she’s got the green glimmer in her eyes, too—and another man, squat, swarthy, brown-haired—_

_“Shepard’s alive, come in, Garrus! Please!” but there’s no response, only the faint sound of another voice—_

Another voice.

_One that Shepard recognises._

“If I don’t use the Crucible, there won’t be a Universe to live on into!”

“Your work on the Logopolis Project was flawed!” _comes another voice—Liara’s!_ “The universe still has billions of years to go!”

“Not since the Singularity!”

_Shepard coughs again, coughs up blood, tastes iron and vomit, and wrests himself free of Kaidan’s hold for a moment—_ aaah!

_He lets out a yelp of pain as the gunshot wound in his stomach twists, and his arm’s burning, and he doesn’t care, he blocks out the pain as he staggers to his feet and_ runs.

_Because he recognises the voice on the radio._

_Because it’s his own._

*

“How did you know about the Logopolis project?” Migro demands.

“I know everything,” Liara says, slowly rising above the edge of the table and pointing her SMG directly at his face. “I’ve looked into your work, your transaction history… your past. And I know your name, Nathan Migro.”

Migro visibly tenses at the sound of his own name as Liara’s eyes narrow.

“Or should I say… Jon Grissom?”

What? _No._ But…

_Holy fucking shitweasels on a bicycle._ Nathan Joss Migro is an anagram of Jonathan Grissom! _That_ was where I thought I recognised his face, and his voice from!

Jon Grissom, former hero of the Alliance, died a hermit on Elysium in 2185. But yes—beyond the nose job and the facelift, and the altered hair, _yes_ , it is him!

His face is painted with horror, his jaw hanging open, his eyes wide with rage, and he moves his hand to the rocket launcher—

and there’s a _CRASH_ from the door as it buckles inwards from the blast of a proximity mine, and four figures emerge.

The front one has blue eyes—eyes that Kaidan was right about, the deepest, coolest, bluest blue ever, and Kaidan following directly behind him—but the face and arm and his enviro-suit and his abdomen are caked in blood, but he’s standing up, wheezing heavily, and his face is locked in a twist of pain and astonishment.

“Anyone want to tell me what’s going on?” he demands.

I realise that, in the confusion, I’m pointing my gun at him. _Stupid._ I lower it, and point it off in Grissom’s direction as Tali and Robert dash behind the table, terrified looks on their faces. I still can’t see Steve and Garrus behind the table, but judging by their breathing they must be in a bad way.

_God, he’s shorter than I expected him to be. And softer-looking. Maybe that’s because he’s injured…_

“Jon Grissom,” he splutters, moving forward slowly, deliberately, his assault rifle aimed at Grissom’s temple. “You were my hero when I was a kid. You were what made me want to join the Alliance. I…”

Shepard coughs again, groaning in pain before summoning up the will to continue. “You… when I was in N-school, doing my command training, I based my speech patterns on you because they said my voice wasn’t strong enough. And now…” he says, stumbling forward and pushing the nuzzle of the rifle into Grissom’s chin, “…this looks pretty bad, so you’d better explain _damn quickly._ ”

“Don’t listen to him, Shepard!” Liara calls from across the room, “he was building his own Crucible! He was going to destroy _all_ synthetic life!”

“I WASN’T _MEANING_ TO DO THAT!” Grissom ejaculates, with a newfound ferocity. “THERE’S NO OTHER WAY!”

“No other way to do what?” Shepard asks, coolly.

“The singularity you created, the synthesis, the Crucible… that amount of dark energy,” Grissom gasps, “it’s affecting the fabric of the universe! Accelerating its expansion, it’s going to cause a gravitational unbinding! The _end of the universe!_ The whole universe!”

“We’ve always known that dark energy is what’ll cause the Heat Death,” Shepard says, “tell me how using the Crucible will stop that!”

“Everyone has QEC built into them now! Everyone, every _thing_ is giving off dark energy! If we stop that—”

“By destroying the synthetic part of _everybody_ ,” I snap, “you’ll just be killing people!”

“To give us more time! If I don’t do this _now_ , the effects could start to show in a few centuries—”

“It’s not worth it, Shepard!” I shout, “don’t listen to him!”

“Please!” Grissom pleads, his yes betraying the sincerity of his words. He really _does_ believe this… and Christ, it _is_ frightening—

Shepard steps back for a moment, letting the rifle drop to the floor.

“Everything has its time, Admiral. Everybody lives and everybody dies.”

He breathes in slowly, and looks once at Liara, and again at Grissom.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he says. “You’re a good man.”

“Thank you,” Grissom whispers, turning back to his console.

“But I’m not letting you do this,” Shepard growls, and hurls his fist at Grissom’s face.

He dodges, and grabs Shepard by his arm, twists it around, headbutts him as Shepard makes another lunge. I rise my pistol, but I can’t get a clear shot as they grapple, and Grissom’s winning, throwing repeated punches at Shepard’s chest, and his nose, and I notice a blue glow in my peripheral vision, and Liara cries, “get _BACK!_ ”

There’s the growl of wind, and a biotic crash and a _roar_ as a figure charges across the room, flinging Shepard to the side as he collides with Grissom—and there’s a _crack_ and a _boom_ and a blast of ionised air from the explosion.

Grissom grunts as he lands on the floor and goes limp, and Kaidan staggers, breathing heavily, and grasps Shepard’s arm. That must have _hurt_ terribly, but—

“Thank you,” Shepard whispers, as Kaidan gingerly helps him to his feet again.

And he lets out another scream of pain, as I instinctively go over to check Grissom’s body. He’s out cold, but he’s still breathing. “What are we going to do about him?” I demand.

“Bring him with— _aaah!_ ” Shepard cries, twitching in pain as I spot a trail of green flash across his face.

He buckles to the floor, and Kaidan grasps him tight, and Robert and Tali help Garrus and Steve up as she radios the shuttle.

“Joker, it’s me. We’ve got Migro,” she barks, “we’ve got four casualties in total. Order the fleet to move in.”

I take a look at Grissom’s body. Lifeless—for the moment. He _was_ going to destroy every synthetic person in the galaxy, and maim everything else.

But he’s not a monster.

I sling him over my shoulder (lighter than I was expecting) and follow Tali as she runs for the airlock, and when I get there I slump the body down on the floor. Still breathing, still alive, but he needs medical attention, soon.

And so does Shepard. He’s on the floor, now, laid on his back as the shuttle door slams shut.

“We’re in, Joker! Go!” Tali yells, as Kaidan fumbles for the medi-gel and some bottled water from one of the crates. There’s a stench from the sweat that’s built up inside my armour, and blood, and vomit, and medi-gel, and Shepard’s yelps of pain have been reduced to a quiet moan.

“You’re all safe, now, Shepard,” Kaidan whispers, “we’re getting you out of here.”

“How long’s it been?” Shepard coughs. I look at Kaidan again—he still looks roughly the same has he did twenty years ago, especially now he’s shaved again, but it’s still obvious.

“Twenty-two years,” Kaidan whispers, resting his forehead against Shepard’s and kissing his nose.

Shepard doesn’t react to this news at all, just lets out another moan of pain as his eyes flash bright green. We can all tell what’s happening, so there’s no need for anyone to explain it. Shepard’s being synthesised, his biology is being rewritten—around himself.

“I feel like I’m gonna…” Shepard whispers. Throw up? No, _pass out._

“Stay with me!” Kaidan pleads, holding Shepard’s hand tight, “you can manage this! Stay with me!”

“I… I…”

He lets out another breath, gurgles, and closes his eyes, and Kaidan screws up his face and kisses the back of Shepard’s hand.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers.


	8. EPILOGUE: A Long-Deserved Holiday

### Three years later

Joker is out chopping Carpathian wood when his youngest son, DAVEDI, buries his own hatchet in a tree-stump to give him some news.

“She is now approaching the landing pad, Dad,” DAVEDI says. Joker sets down his axe, removes his cap, and dusts off his shirt.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, heading off, up the hill to the newly-built landing pad.

The shuttle flies Citadel colours, and a small screen on the nose indicates its purpose. ‘NC-SEC DIPLOMATIC ESCORT.’ The emblems of Earth, of Thessia, Palaven, Sur’Kesh, Tuchanka and Rannoch are emblazoned on its doors, glimmering as it neatly positions itself at the centre of the painted circle and sinks to the ground.

The woman who jumps out is still as squat and slightly overweight as she ever was, but she’s turned her hair black, and Joker thinks this makes her look better than she did before. More mature, less pouty.

“Natasha,” he smiles, shaking her hand.

“It’s actually Captain Loftus now,” she smirks.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go all informal on you,” Joker retorts.

“To you, it’s still Natasha,” she smiles, looking out over Rivendell. “You’ve been busy, I see.”

Rivendell now stretches out for around a kilometre and a half, with pre-fab and on-site buildings going up all the time, humans and geth and quarians and turians bustling around the streets with supplies and equipment. “Yeah,” Joker says. “We think we’re about a year and a half from completion.”

“You’ve done very well,” Natasha says.

“Are you in a hurry?” Joker asks.

“I’m not booked off for another hour and a half.”

“In that case, Kaidan’s in the house,” Joker proposes. “Would you like to come in for some coffee?”

“Yeah, why not?” Natasha follows him down the hill path. “I tell you what, though. You could do with putting a funicular railway up this hill.”

“I’ll put that in the next funding request,” Joker laughs.

Her first thought on seeing Kaidan again is noticing how young he looks. He’s put on some weight, he’s cut his hair a little shorter, and he’s looking a lot tidier and _a lot_ healthier. “That’s what colony work does for you,” he quips as the coffee pours from the machine.

They talk for a while. Garrus and Steve were only injured slightly—as slight as a rocket launcher blast _can_ be—and they, along with Tali and Robert, have given up their vocations and moved here to help with the construction of the colony. “Caused quite a political shit-storm in the turian hierarchy,” Kaidan says.

“So I heard,” Natasha says, sipping at her coffee. “I heard they adopted kids, too.”

“Yeah,” Joker interrupts. “Three turian orphans. They’re hot-headed but they’re really awesome. Except for Valen.”

“You’re only saying that because he’s the only person besides EDI who can beat you at _Catacombs and Chimeras_ ,” Kaidan chuckles.

“Shrivel-fringed bastard,” Joker grins. “I’ll beat him one day.”

“I told you, you need to stop maxing out your Persuade stats.”

“This coming from someone who, when playing C&C against me, has won precisely…”

“No games,” Kaidan grins. “Lucky your RPG wins aren’t some kind of measure of friendship.”

“So, yeah, they’re living down in that big house in the village,” Joker continues, “and Steve and Robert have built a lighthouse on the coast. All one happy family.”

“Glad to hear it,” Natasha smiles, downing the last of her coffee. She’s due off in forty-five minutes— _I’d better hurry_ , she thinks. “Kaidan, you’re all packed, I presume?”

“Yup,” he says, standing up. “I’ll meet you at the landing pad. Make sure you poke your head round Liara’s door on the way in.”

When she reaches Dr T’Soni’s bunker-cum-office, she finds Liara stacking equipment, placing it all into storage containers and filing cabinets.

“You closing up shop?” Loftus asks.

“Slowly,” Liara says. “I’m winding down my operations. Time to say goodbye to the Shadow Broker before one of my agents usurps me.”

“Is that likely?” Natasha asks, instinctively looking over her shoulder.

“It’s… not unprecedented,” Liara smiles. “It’ll still be a few more years before I’m done completely… but I want to get back into archaeology and history.”

Her magnum opus with Javik, the last Prothean, is still unfinished. “I still haven’t even decided on a title for it,” she confesses. “But it will be done. One day.”

“ _At your present rate, Dr T’Soni, your book on the Protheans will be complete in two hundred and sixteen years,_ ” Glyph announces, popping up from inside the console.

“I’m not in any hurry,” Liara smiles.

“Just make sure I get a chance to read it, OK?” Natasha grins, shaking Liara’s hand before she leaves.

She trudges a little further down the hill path, her boots crunching against the fallen leaves as she reaches the river, and a small jetty.

In the small clearing at the riverbank, she finds her other passenger, exercising with a jump-rope.

She finds me.

“Natasha,” I say, folding the rope up and stuffing it into the pocket of the trench coat I’ve left folded on the jetty surface. “Good to see you.”

“Admiral Shepard,” she says, extending her hand. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” I smile. “It wasn’t totally unexpected, though.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Loftus says. “I mean, I effectively became a vigilante for twenty-four hours, I killed god knows how many clones, and they promoted me _twice_ and gave me a medal.”

“Funny, isn’t it?” I quip. “How’re you coping these days?”

“I don’t dwell on it too much.” Natasha checks the time as I roll a heavy woollen sweater over my head and shimmy into the brown trench coat. “I mean, they were shitty clones. They were going to die horribly anyway. I suppose we made it reasonably painless.”

“Yeah.” I follow her lead as we trudge up the hill, wiping my brow with my forearm. “How’s Grissom?”

“Still in the Land of Doing Abso-fucking-nothing,” Loftus says. “They’re thinking of turning off his life support.”

Grissom has been in a coma for the last three years—that last charge from Kaidan knocked him out good. I wasn’t even aware Kaidan was capable of doing something like that, but it turned out there was an awful lot I wasn’t aware of.

At least we know the truth now. And I’m still convinced Grissom was a good man, no matter how crotchety and misanthropic.

I tell Natasha about my research. For the last one and a half years—literally as long as I’ve been mobile—I’ve been trying to collate Grissom’s research, see if there’s any truth to it.

It’s worth looking into, at least. I still haven’t turned up any concrete results, but the potential end of the universe should be anyone’s cause for concern. “I suppose his heart was in the right place,” I say, “but sometimes… I still wonder if using the Crucible was the right choice.”

“You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone complaining now,” Natasha says, as we reach the crest of the hill to find Kaidan loading luggage into the shuttle.

“Yeah, but now? In two hundred years? Four hundred? Who knows,” I say, giving Kaidan a hand with the last few bags.

We’re going on a two-week vacation to Mindoir. Somewhere quiet, near the farm by the coast where I grew up. Somewhere out of view of the paparazzi. Kaidan says it’s my birthday next Saturday and I deserve a break.

I suppose I need something to take my mind off this research.

The shuttle’s a lot more comfortable than us military types are used to—leather seats, space for luggage and clothes rather than weapons and medical supplies, small kitchen area. Kaidan holds my hand as we take off.

In this shuttle, the journey takes us less than half an hour. We don’t have to wait in a queue outside the mass relay, and actual travel time to the relays themselves is simplified drastically.

“So, is it just a holiday?” Natasha asks from the cockpit as Mindoir smears into view. “Honeymoon?”

“No,” Kaidan chuckles. “Not a honeymoon.”

“Dammit, I had a hundred credits riding on that,” she quips.

“Maybe,” I suggest, quietly.

“You should,” Natasha says. “It’s been… well, for _you_ it’s been three and a half years? It’s about time you made honest men out of each other.”

“Maybe.” I take a look at Kaidan’s face again, at the battered plains, the eyebrows as bushy as they ever were, the increasing flecks of grey in his hair. _This man waited twenty-two years for me._

We’ve both been rubbish romantics in general. The first time we slept together, Kaidan had a splitting migraine. The second time—the first time we made love—it lasted less than five minutes, and neither of us had had the foresight to bring any alcohol. For the twenty-two subsequent anniversaries, I was… well, dead.

Dead, and not for the first time. And not the last. I’ve conditioned myself to the pain now, but the echo of the Crucible is still changing me. Even now, if I think about it, I can feel a perpetual electric burning in my thighs.

Still, at least they’re working. For now. I’m being synthesised, based on a template that’s based off _myself._ No-one can tell me what effect that’s going to have on me, long-term. No idea if I can expect to live a full one and a half centuries, or even longer, or if I’ll wake up one morning and my legs will have stopped working altogether. Or my eyes. Or my lungs.

At least that makes all this special. Every single day, and days like this especially, I think, as Natasha brings the shuttle in to land at a convenient spot in the Rowling Marshlands. Flat, and less than two klicks from the old farmhouse where we’re supposed to be staying.

_It’s good to be home,_ I realise as I step from the shuttle, Kaidan’s hand in mine, and breathe in Mindoir’s atmosphere again. The gravity here is slightly above Earth normal, but less than it is on Carpathia, so I feel like there’s a spring in my step as we unload our luggage onto a hover-platform.

“I suppose I’ll see you in two weeks,” Natasha says, offering her hand again. “Assuming I’m the one who gets rostered to bring you back.”

“I sure hope so,” Kaidan says. “Take care, Natasha.”

“Thank you. You two, too,” she smiles. “See ya!”

We wave as the shuttle takes off again, its downdraft buffeting Kaidan’s hair into a ridiculous unkempt mass that still looks attractive, somehow.

That woman’s a good cop. She’ll go far, I hope.

And she’ll certainly have a _lot_ of stories to tell.

*

My dad was always very fond of stargazing.

The little farmhouse is close to a public park I spent a lot of time in as a little kid, with an omni-scope he got me for my sixth birthday.

The new one I’m turning about in my hands right now doesn’t feel the same, and it isn’t made as nice, but it does the job. Marking out the constellations, labelling the stars, making the sky easy to navigate without a full galaxy map.

“I’m trying to find the ones we’ve visited,” I explain, tracking around where I know the Perseus Veil is. “I’ve just found Rannoch.”

Kaidan chuckles, putting the bottle of whiskey down beneath the park bench and downing the shot glass. “Looks like we’re going to be out here a long time,” he says.

“Yeah,” I smile, scanning around again. _Eagle Nebula. Strabo._ “And there’s… well, there _was_ Jarrahe Station,” I say. I take the telescope away from my eyes, stowing it in my coat pocket, peering at the nebula with the naked eye for a moment. “For all the stick we give him, we owe that man a lot,” I say.

“Who? Grissom?”

I nod, and Kaidan lets out one of those half-sighs that he probably does without even realising it. Huh. I always found them cute. Does that count as cute? Possibly.

“I suppose you’re right,” he continues. “I mean, he built another Crucible.”

“Yeah. I suppose I owe my life to him,” I muse, finding Kaidan’s free hand with my own.

“I got to hold you again,” Kaidan whispers, leaning in and planting a kiss on my cheek. “I win.”

Yeah. Yeah, I suppose we win. Sort of.

And then—

“Let’s get married.”

He delivers the proposal perfectly normally, as if he’s suggesting we buy some more milk or something.

“Really?” I ask, not sure why.

“Yeah,” Kaidan whispers. “I think we should…”

He trails off, his face flushing pink. “Yeah. I think we should get married,” he says, his voice running a little weak.

He’s asking. _Finally._ And I don’t have to think for a second before answering.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “Yeah, let’s get married.” I giggle a little—not sure why I did that, either—and kiss him on the lips, softly, gently.

“Yeah,” he whispers again as we separate.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a ring?” I smile, knowing that this is exactly the sort of thing he does on impulse so no, he probably doesn’t.

“No… you’re right, no, I don’t.”

Typical us, rubbish romantics. But he’s the best damn lover in the universe. I’m convinced.

I rest my head on his shoulder, holding his hand tight, looking out to sea, listening for the sound of the sea, the gentle crashing of the waves beneath us.

As I close my eyes, shivering a little in the evening chill, I’m with Kaidan, the man I love, in a place I love. And we’re stargazing, here, holding hands and happy to be alive.

_What the—_

And then I inhale sharply, opening my eyes to check if I just saw what I _thought_ I saw.

Because as I closed my eyes, for the tiniest fraction of a second, I thought I saw a star going out.


End file.
